III 



i i 



iliiijiiiitiiiiii 






YSTERY RELIGIONS 
NEW TESTAMENT - 



SHEL 



111 






BR 



ill HI 



I 



IH i I 

Hi 



I 



fl 



mil 
Mnfll 









I 
I 




Class 3-SrH 

Book S5 

Copyright U?. 



CflRfRIGKT DEPCSIE 



OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SO-CALLED. 

16mc. Net, 50 cents 
RUDOLF EUCKEN'S MESSAGE TO OUR AGE. 

16mo. Net, 35 cents 
THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA. 

16mo. Net, 35 cents 
SACERDOTALISM IN THE NINETEENTH 

CENTURY. Crown 8vo. Net, $2.00 

UNBELIEF IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Crown 8vo. Net, $2.00 
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

Two volumes. 8vo. $3.50 
SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

8vo. Net, $2.00 
A FOURFOLD TEST OF MORMONISM. 

16mo. Net, 50 cents 
APPENDIX TO A FOURFOLD TEST OF 

MORMONISM. 16mo. Net, 10 cents 

THEOSOPHY AND NEW THOUGHT. 

16mo. Net, 50 cents 



The Mystery Religions and 
The New Testament 



By 
HENRY C. SHELDON 

Professor in Boston University 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



9,° 






Copyright, 1918, by 
HENRY C. SHELDON 



AUG 17 I'Bl'a 

©CU501480 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 



3 : 



Preface 7 

CHAPTER I 

i Characters 
of the Mystery .Religions 9 



J^ A Glance at the Characteristic Features 
CHAPTER II 



Some Special Phases in the Content or His- 
tory of the Mystery Religions 39 

CHAPTER III 

Distinctive Points in Which the Mystery 
Religions Show Agreement or Contrast 
with Christianity 57 

CHAPTER IV 

The Question of Paul's Indebtedness to 
the Mystery Religions for Characteristic 
Terms and Ideas 72 

CHAPTER V 

The Question of Paul's Indebtedness to 
the Mystery Religions for His Concep- 
tions of Baptism and the Eucharist 100 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

The Question op the Indebtedness op the 
Johannine Writings, and op Other Por- 
tions op the New Testament, to the Mys- 
tery Religions 131 

Conclusion 154 



PREFACE 

This book has been written, not 
for the small class of experts, but 
for the large class of those who are 
likely to appreciate a compact exposi- 
tion of a prominent theme in New 
Testament criticism. We respect, how- 
ever, the function of the experts, and 
venture to cherish the hope that of 
those among them who may chance 
to look into this little treatise a fair 
proportion may be able to approve 
its tenor. 



CHAPTER I 

A GLANCE AT THE CHARACTER- 
ISTIC FEATURES OF THE MYS- 
TERY RELIGIONS 

The general conception underlying 
the term "Mystery," as used in this 
connection, has been very well ex- 
pressed in the following sentences: 
"The word Mystery was the name 
of a religious society, founded not on 
citizenship or kindred, but on the 
choice of its members, for the practice 
of rites by which, it was believed, 
their happiness might be promoted 
both in this world and in the next. 
The Greek word (ivory ptov does not, 
of its own force, imply anything, in 
our sense of the word 'mysterious/ 
that is to say, obscure or difficult to 
comprehend. That which it connotes 



10 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

is, rather, something which can only 
be known on being imparted by some 
one already in possession of it, not 
by mere reason and research which 
are common to all." 1 Thus the Mys- 
tery stood for a knowledge and a 
benefit that were accessible only by 
way of initiation. The one who had 
been initiated was considered under 
very imperative bonds of secrecy. His 
obligation, however, to maintain si- 
lence concerned less the general sig- 
nificance of the Mystery than its 
ceremonial details. 

In a full account of the Mystery 
Religions notice would need to be 
taken of the cult of Ishtar and Tam- 
muz. But as our survey pertains 
only to such religious types as had an 
opportunity to impinge upon early 
Christianity on the theater of the 
Grseco-Roman world, a specific dealing 
with the Babylonian cult is hardly 

1 S. Cheetham, The Mysteries Pagan and Christian, pp. 40, 41. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 11 

in place, though a reference to it as 
an influential antecedent may be quite 
pertinent. Of direct concern are 
the Graeco-Thracian Mysteries, hav- 
ing their principal seat at Eleusis, 
and associated in particular with De- 
meter, Persephone, and Dionysos; those 
of Cybele and Attis in Phrygia; of 
Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria; of 
Isis, Osiris, and Serapis originating in 
Egypt; and of Mithra, primarily con- 
nected with Persia and spreading 
thence in the Roman empire. In 
addition to these it is appropriate to 
take note of certain types of religious 
thought and endeavor which were in 
close affinity with the standpoint of 
the Mystery Religions. Here, with- 
out doubt, are to be included Orphism 
and the scheme represented in the 
Hermetic writings. Some consider that 
it is appropriate to bring into con- 
sideration the teaching of Posidonius, 
who figured at Rhodes in the first 



12 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

half of the century preceding the 
birth of Christianity, and who, along 
with a certain degree of adherence 
to the Stoic philosophy, combined much 
of an eclectic temper. It is claimed 
also that an incipient Gnosticism, in- 
debted not a little for spirit and 
content to the Mystery Religions, 
was already in the field when Chris- 
tianity began its mission. Note is 
taken of the fact that the knowl- 
edge (yv&aig), which was the boast 
of the Gnostic sects, was referred 
rather to mystical relationships and 
transcendent communications than to 
the labored procedures of scholarship 
and science. 

In connection with the Mystery 
Religions as a class, it is important 
to recognize the serious limitations 
which are imposed upon our knowl- 
edge. "The study of the antique 
Mysteries/ ' says De Jong, "is ex- 
tremely difficult, since we have at 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 13 

our disposal only fragmentary and 
often very scanty material." 2 "Per- 
haps no loss," remarks Cumont, 
"caused by the general wreck of 
ancient literature has been more dis- 
astrous than that of the liturgic books 
of paganism. A few mystic formulas 
quoted incidentally by pagan or Chris- 
tian authors and a few fragments of 
hymns in honor of the gods are prac- 
tically all that escaped destruction. . . . 
The treatises on mythology that have 
been preserved deal almost entirely 
with the ancient Hellenic fables made 
famous by the classic writers, to the 
neglect of the Oriental religions. There 
is no period of the Roman empire 
concerning which we are so little 
informed as the third century, pre- 
cisely the one during which the Ori- 
ental religions reached the apogee of 
their power." 3 No one of these re- 



2 Das Antike Mysterienwesen, p. 4. 

3 The Oriental Religions : n Roman Paganism, pp. 11-14. 



14 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ligions has bequeathed a complete 
liturgy or ritual. An enthusiastic de- 
scription of certain scenes pertaining 
to the initiation into the Mysteries 
of Isis, as contained in the Meta- 
morphoses of Apuleius, a writer of 
the second century, is perhaps as note- 
worthy as anything which has been 
furnished on this subject. Albrecht 
Dieterich, it is true, has claimed that 
in the content of a Paris papyrus we 
have a substantially complete liturgy 
of Mithraism. 4 But Cumont and 
others have challenged the legitimacy 
of the identification. It would seem, 
therefore, that the specified document 
offers a very insecure foundation to 
build upon. 

This fragmentary character of the 
sources of information evidently en- 
forces the need of caution against 
indulging in over-broad and ill-founded 
inductions. It is possible for a re- 

* Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1903. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 15 

viewer to be tempted to gather up 
the scattered hints derivable from the 
several Mystery Religions and then 
to apply them collectively to one 
or another of these religions, thus 
assigning to it a larger and more 
definite content than is warrantable. 
A suspicion that recent scholarship 
has not wholly escaped this tempta- 
tion easily intrudes itself. "There is 
undoubtedly/ ' writes Maurice Jones, 
"a tendency among the students of 
these cults to erect a building out 
of material that is wholly inadequate 
for the purpose, and to counterbalance 
their lack of genuine matter by in- 
serting their own hypotheses." 5 

On the question of the period and 
province of the Mysteries it is to 
be noted that those of Eleusis were 
started at an early point in the his- 
tory of Greece. The cult of Demeter, 

6 The New Testament in the Twentieth Century, p. 138. 



16 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

which was central to them, is sup- 
posed to have been current in Attica 
as early as the eleventh century before 
Christ; 6 and, while a considerable 
period may have elapsed before the 
scheme at Eleusis was relatively ma- 
tured, it had doubtless been a factor 
in Greek religion for centuries prior 
to the culmination of Attic civiliza- 
tion. In respect of their sphere these 
Mysteries were limited by the require- 
ment that their celebration should 
take place at Eleusis and by the 
exclusion of the possibility of initiation 
elsewhere. On this score they were 
placed at a disadvantage as compared 
with various rivals in the Grseco- 
Roman world. For, whatever local 
associations they may have had, the 
Mysteries generally were free to gather 
groups of devotees in any quarter. 
At a comparatively early date they 
began to invade the West. "First, 

8 Foucart, Lea Mystdrea d'Eleusis, p. 24&. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 17 

there was a slow infiltration of despised 
exotic religions, then toward the end 
of the first century the Orontes, the 
Nile, and the Halys, to use the words 
of Juvenal, flowed into the Tiber to 
the great indignation of the Romans. 
Finally a hundred years later an in- 
flux of Egyptian, Semitic, and Persian 
beliefs and customs took place that 
threatened to submerge all that Greek 
and Roman genius had laboriously 
built up." 7 The Cult of Cybele was 
represented in Rome as early as B. C. 
204. Under the empire it obtained 
considerable patronage in the West. 
In the Greek states it received only 
a scanty welcome. The cult of Isis 
and of the related Egyptian divinities 
had begun to take root in Greece and 
southern Italy in the third century 
before Christ. At Rome it was dis- 
countenanced by the early emperors, 



7 Cumont. The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 



18 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

distinct attempts to drive it out being 
made by Augustus and Tiberius. But 
their successors did not follow their 
example. Otho was openly favorable 
to the Egyptian priests and rites, as 
was also Domitian. From the end of 
the first century the cult of Isis won 
an ever-increasing company of adher- 
ents till the culmination of its influence 
in the early part of the third century. 8 
Mithraism secured but few converts 
in the Hellenic domain. It was repre- 
sented at Rome as early as B. C. 67, 
but gained no appreciable foothold 
till the closing decades of the next 
century. In the second and third 
Christian centuries it was given a 
wide extension in the region stretch- 
ing from the Caspian Sea to Italy and 
the Eastern part of Gaul. Being to 
a peculiar degree the religion of sol- 
diers, it was carried wherever the 



8 Lafaye, Histoire du Cultes dee DivinitSs d'Alexandrie, pp. 
24-63. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 19 

Roman legions were sent, and was 
furthermore propagated by slaves from 
the East and by Syrian merchants. 
The Emperor Commodus (A. D. 180- 
192) became an adherent, and various 
of his successors regarded it with 
favor. The climax of its progress was 
probably reached toward the end of 
the third century. Julian the Apostate 
beyond the middle of the next cen- 
tury exerted himself to the utmost 
to restore its fortunes, but his 
short-lived reaction (361-363) availed 
little to check the movement toward 
irretrievable downfall. The Orphic 
brotherhoods were an appreciable fac- 
tor in the Greek domain, including 
Southern Italy, from the sixth cen- 
tury before Christ. The Hermetic 
literature in its extant form was not 
earlier than the second century of 
our era. It is supposed, however, 
that it incorporated ways of thinking 
that had been operative at an earlier 



20 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

date. 9 How widely it became current 
is not clearly determined. Reitzen- 
stein's conclusion that it represented 
a typical form of the piety of the 
second and third centuries has been 
challenged by Cumont and others. 10 
From the tenor of its content it is 
natural to conclude that its patronage 
was limited, for the most part, to the 
more speculative minds whose ad- 
herence to the classic faiths had be- 
come little else than nominal. After 
its contact with Christianity Gnos- 
ticism became, especially in the sec- 



9 Professor E. D. Burton, after noting diverse views as to the 
date of the Hermetic writings, adds this statement: "To affirm 
that they influenced New Testament usage would be hazardous, 
but they perhaps throw some light on the direction in wnich 
thought was moving in New Testament times" (American Journal 
of Theology, October, 1916, p. 566). J. M. Creed reviews the 
data presented by Reitzenstein and draws this conclusion: "The 
bulk of the Hermetic writings were probably written in the third 
century or not earlier than the end of the second century" (Journal 
of Theological Studies, July, 1914). G. R. S. Mead concludes 
that some of these documents "are at least contemporaneous 
with the earliest writings of Christianity" (Thrice-Greatest 
Hermes, III, 323). 

10 Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, pp. 233, 
234; Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, pp. 
76, 77; Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, pp. Ill, 112. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 21 

ond century, a widely disseminated 
phenomenon. In the pre-Christian 
stage it existed more extensively in 
the unorganized form of congenial 
materials than in the character of 
specific sects, though there were some 
parties to whom that designation might 
properly be applied. 

In respect of the sources from which 
the several Mystery Religions drew 
their materials opinion is not unan- 
imous. Two things, however, may be 
regarded as established. In the first 
place, it cannot be doubted that the 
Babylonian story of Ishtar and Tam- 
muz wrought in some degree for the 
production of kindred representations 
in Syria and Asia Minor, and it is 
possible that through these channels 
it may have touched religious thought 
in Greece. In the second place, it 
cannot fairly be questioned that the 
cults which reached to wide limits 



22 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

in the Roman empire, like those of 
Isis and Mithra, ultimately incorpo- 
rated materials from various sources, 
so that they became in a rather 
emphatic sense syncretistic. There is 
good reason also for concluding that 
Orphism was open in the course of 
its development to the introduction 
of new elements, standing in this 
respect somewhat in contrast with the 
relatively fixed character of the Eleu- 
sinian Mysteries. On the relation of 
both to Egyptian antecedents con- 
trasted views have been expressed. 
Foucart has argued very earnestly 
for the distinct and large indebtedness 
of the Eleusinian rites to those of 
Isis; indeed, he makes the former no 
more than a Hellenic version of the 
latter. 11 Farnell, on the other hand, 
rejects the idea of radical influence 
from the Egyptian quarter. 12 Foucart 

11 Les Mysteres d'Eleusis. 

12 The Higher Aspects of the Greek Religion. Compare De 
Jong, pp. 53, 54. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 23 

has also drawn the conclusion that 
Orphism borrowed, especially through 
the medium of Pythagoras, quite 
largely from Egyptian sources. On 
the other side Maass asserts the con- 
viction that the Orphic religion "is in 
essence national-Hellenic." 13 For our 
purpose it is not necessary to pro- 
nounce on the disputed points. We 
see no reason why an intermediate 
view may not be eligible. 

Viewed in their general cast, the 
Mysteries appear rather as the affair 
of voluntary brotherhoods than as 
state institutions. Their status was 
very much like that of the early 
Christian societies. There were some, 
however, that claimed a definite po- 
litical relation. From the seventh 
century before Christ the Eleusinian 
Mysteries were under the direct pat- 
ronage of Athens, and the Samothra- 

13 Orpheus, Untersuchung zu Griechischen, Romischen, Altchrist- 
lichen Jenseitsdichtung und Religion. 



24 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

cian also were accorded state recog- 
nition. The Ptolemies in Egypt were 
active patrons of the cult of Serapis, 
but their jurisdiction covered only a 
fraction of the area over which this 
form of Egyptian religion gathered its 
groups of worshipers. 

It is the common verdict of those 
who have written upon the subject 
of the Mysteries that they offered to 
their votaries no considerable body 
of either moral or metaphysical in- 
struction. A modicum of moral im- 
pression may have been ministered by 
them; but of moral indoctrination 
nothing worthy of note. 14 The state- 
ment of Aristotle respecting the trans- 
actions at Eleusis, "they give only 
impressions," may be regarded as an 

M At Eleusis the homicide was rejected as also the professor 
of unhallowed rites. "Otherwise there seem to have been no 
definite moral demands upon the candidates. They were not 
redeemed from any sinful ways. No pattern of conduct was held 
up before them; nor was the nature of the future life made clear" 
(J. Estlin Carpenter, Phases of Early Christianity, p. 217). 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 25 

authentic description of the Mysteries 
generally. It is indeed granted that 
Orphism developed an appreciable body 
of teaching, and that in the mysti- 
cal Hermetic literature the doctrinal 
element, though not strictly uniform 
or self-consistent, was by no means 
wanting. There is no hesitation, how- 
ever, in the verdict that the liturgical, 
the scenic, and the spectacular, rather 
than the formally didactic, were in 
general characteristic of the Mysteries. 
They included rites of ablution; they 
emphasized the main features in the 
mythological stories of the divinities 
with whom communion was sought; 
they led on the subjects of initiation 
into scenes which were designed to 
stimulate the imagination and to 
awaken a vivid sense both of the 
terrors and joys which lie beyond the 
earthly pilgrimage. How effectively 
they could enkindle the fancy of an 
impressible person is intimated by the 



26 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

description which Apuleius has given 
of initiation into the mysteries of 
Isis. These are his words: "I have 
transcended the boundaries of death, 
I have trodden the threshold of 
Proserpine, and having traversed all 
the elements I am returned to the 
earth. In the middle of the night I 
have seen the sun scintillating with a 
pure light; I have approached the 
gods below and the gods above, and 
have worshiped face to face." 15 Some 
allowance may be made for the stylistic 
ambition of the rhetorician; but it 
is entirely probable that the Mysteries, 
at least in the later period of their 
history, by the employment of various 
dramatic expedients, such as the com- 
bination of deep shadows and brilliant 
lights, were often able to exercise a 
kind of hypnotic influence over those 
who sought in them pledges and safe- 
guards of future well-being. That the 

15 Metamorphoses, xi, 23. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 27 

scenic representations were in general 
well adapted to their end there is 
every reason to believe. This is not 
saying, however, that they harbored 
nothing which a normally educated 
sense of propriety would reprobate. 
The contrary must be admitted if 
the interpretation which a prominent 
expositor has put upon the nuptials 
of Zeus and Demeter, as figured at 
Eleusis, is authorized. 16 

A naturalistic basis of the mysteries 
is quite unmistakable. The divinities 
whom they commemorated were pri- 
marily vegetation gods, or, more 
broadly speaking, gods linked with 
the needs and fortunes of vegetable 
and animal life. Such distinctively 
was the earliest in the list, the Baby- 
lonian Tammuz, "the young god of 
vegetation who dies in the heat of 
the summer solstice and descends to 

I8 Foucart, Les Mystdres d'Eleusis, pp. 475-497. 



28 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

the world below, leaving the earth 
barren until he returns." 17 In Mithra- 
ism this point of view may not have 
been relatively prominent; but in the 
Mystery cults generally the divinities 
were closely connected with the re- 
quirements of cereal growths and ani- 
mal procreation. The following state- 
ment respecting Adonis, Attis, and 
Osiris may be given a wider applica- 
tion: "All three apparently embodied 
the powers of fertility in general and 
of vegetation in particular. All three 
were believed to have died and risen 
again from the dead; and the divine 
death and resurrection of all three 
were dramatically represented at an- 
nual festivals, which their worshipers 
celebrated with alternate transports of 
sorrow and joy, of weeping and ex- 
ultation. The natural phenomena thus 
sympathetically conceived and myth- 
ically represented were the great 

17 Faraell, Greece and Babylon, p. 105. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 29 

changes of the seasons, especially the 
most striking and impressive of all, 
the decay and revival of vegetation; 
and the intention of the sacred dramas 
was to revive and strengthen by sym- 
pathetic magic the failing energies of 
nature, in order that the trees should 
bear fruit, that the corn should ripen, 
that men and animals should repro- 
duce their kind." 18 No doubt the 
gods who were the chief figures in 
the Mysteries came to stand for other 
functions than those named in the 
citation. A great variety of powers 
and offices was assigned to Osiris and 
Dionysos, and to a nearly equal extent 
others were given a multiple role by 
the faith and enthusiasm of their 
devotees. However, the significant 
fact remains that in the Mystery 
Religions, as a class, a naturalistic 
basis was prominent. 



18 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Studies in the History of Oriental 
Religions, p. 383. 



30 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

The naturalistic phase was coupled 
with magic, as indeed is emphatically 
indicated in Frazer's statement of the 
design of the rites in which tribute 
was paid to Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. 
In so far as the Mysteries were related 
to the Babylonian and Egyptian re- 
ligions they naturally shared in the 
element of magic, for that element 
abounded in those religions. It seems 
also to be the judgment of scholars 
that the Mysteries wrought for the 
increased dominion of magic in the 
Grseco-Roman world. As late as the 
reign of Augustus, Cumont tells us, 
professional magicians were despised, 
but with the advance of the Oriental 
cults they rose in esteem. 19 How 
strongly the current set in that direc- 
tion is indicated by the ultimate grav- 
itation of Neo-Platonism into theurgy. 
There are also direct evidences that 
the Mysteries in their scheme of rites 

19 The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, pp. 186, 187. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT SI 

built on the basis of magic. "It was 
necessary/' we are informed, "at 
Eleusis that the formulas divulged to 
the initiated should be pronounced 
with the right intonation, otherwise 
they would lose their effectiveness. ,,2 ° 
This is a plain hint that the formulas 
were construed after the analogy of 
magic. Gasquet probably renders a 
true description when he says: "The 
sacraments of the Mysteries always 
suppose a magical intervention. It 
is words, rites, formulas that have 
the faculty of acting directly upon 
the gods and of constraining their 
will. It imports little whether the 
man making use of them understands 
either their sense or their reason." 21 

The age in which the Mysteries 
had their widest diffusion in the Ro- 
man empire was a period much given 



20 Foucart, Les Mystdres d'Eleusis, p. 150. 

21 Essai sur le Culte et les MystSres de Mithra, pp. 80, 81. 



32 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

to astrology and sidereal mysticism 
in general. In the mystical scheme 
of Possidonius large account was made 
of the stars and of their interconnec- 
tion with the fortunes of souls. In 
his thinking Chaldaean elements were 
blended with Stoic, and his influence 
helped to give currency to a complex 
sidereal scheme as an important and 
conditioning factor in religion. "Wide 
extension was awarded to the doc- 
trine that the soul in descending from 
heaven takes on the attributes of 
the planets through which she jour- 
neys, until finally she enters into 
embodied existence. After death she 
has, by a reverse movement, to make 
the heavenward journey, in order, 
after having laid aside at the several 
stations the limitations of earthly ex- 
istence, to return to her original home 
in the realm of light." 22 Not all of 



22 Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Romische Kultur in ihren Bezie- 
hungen zu Judentum und Christentum, p. 166. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 33 

the Mystery Religions may have taken 
specific account of such a pronounced 
sidereal framework. It was, however, 
congenially related to their natural- 
istic and magical trend, and it is 
quite certain that in Mithraism, which 
encountered Chaldsean influences dur- 
ing its movement to the West, it was 
prominently represented. The follow- 
ing sketch of the Mithraic scheme for 
the ascent of the soul will serve to 
illustrate: "The heavens were divided 
into seven spheres, each of which 
was conjoined with a planet. A sort 
of ladder composed of eight super- 
posed gates, the first seven of which 
were constructed of different metals, 
was the symbolic suggestion, in the 
temples, of the road to be followed to 
reach the supreme region of the fixed 
stars. To pass from one story to the 
next the wayfarer had each time to 
enter a gate guarded by an angel of 
Ormuzd. The initiates alone, to whom 



34 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

the appropriate formulas had been 
taught, knew how to appease the 
inexorable guardians. As the soul 
traversed these different zones, it rid 
itself, as one would of garments, of 
the passions and faculties it had re- 
ceived in its descent to the earth. 
It abandoned to the moon its vital 
and nutritive energy, to Mercury its 
desires, to Venus its wicked appetites, 
to the sun its intellectual capacities, 
to Mars its love of war, to Jupiter 
its ambitious dreams, to Saturn its 
inclinations. It was naked, stripped 
of every vice and every sensibility, 
when it penetrated the eighth heaven 
to enjoy there, as an essence supreme, 
and in the eternal light that bathed 
the gods, beatitude without end." 23 
In the Hermetic literature a kindred 
representation occurs. 24 

Under proper limitations reference 

23 Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 144, 145. 

24 Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 231. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 35 

may be made to a pantheistic tendency 
in the Mystery Religions. The lim- 
itations are that this tendency did 
not come to noteworthy expression in 
all of them; and in any case was 
conspicuous rather in the later than 
the earlier stages. Of Orphism it is 
noticed that, while it did not discard 
mythological terminology, it revealed 
a certain affiliation with pantheism in 
its tendency to conceive of the gods 
as vague cosmic powers. 25 In the 
Hermetic writings, as in the Gnostic 
systems, pantheistic and dualistic 
strains were combined. 26 According 
to the plain representation of the for- 
mer, God not only contains all things, 
but is veritably all things. 27 In their 
later stages the Egyptian cults showed 



2* Rohde, Psyche, II, 114, 115. 

26 Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 46. G. R. S. Mead, while 
noticing the double aspect, argues that it is not appropriate to 
take much account of the dualistic phase. Thrice-Greatest 
Hermes, II, 30, 31, 115, 116, 160, 218. 

27 Menard, Herm&s Trisme'giste, Traduction Complete, pp. 
boiv, lxxviii. See also Mead, II, 16, 17, 104-106, 212, 276, 309, 377. 



36 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

a close affinity with a pantheistic 
standpoint. They were developed in 
this direction, if we may trust Cu- 
mont, by Chaldaean and Syrian in- 
fluences. He writes: "Isis became a 
pantheistic power that was everything 
in one, una quae est omnia. The 
authority of Serapis was no less ex- 
alted, and his field no less extensive. 
He also was regarded as a universal 
god of whom men liked to say that 
he was 'unique/ In him all energies 
were centered, although the functions 
of Zeus, of Pluto, or of Helios were 
especially ascribed to him. . . . This 
theological system, which did not gain 
the upper hand in the Occident until 
the second century of our era, was 
not brought in Dy Egypt. It did not 
have the exclusive predominance there 
that it had under the empire, and 
even in Plutarch's time it was only 
one creed among many. The deciding 
influence in this matter was exercised 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 37 

by the Syrian Baals and the Chaldaean 
astrology." 28 The result was an ap- 
proach to monotheism, a cosmic power 
being acknowledged, which, indeed, 
might be manifested in different forms 
and addressed under different names, 
but which it was thought appropriate 
to describe as one and universal. 

In the relative prevalence of the 
pantheistic viewpoint a favorable basis 
of syncretism, or comity, between the 
Mystery Religions was obviously pro- 
vided. Those who had any motive 
to compound the different divinities 
were able to plead that there was no 
real difference between them, since 
they were to be interpreted as only 
varying designations of the power 
which is one in essence though di- 
versified in manifestation. Oriental 
and Egyptian gods were freely iden- 
tified with the Greek, as Mithra with 

28 The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, pp. 89, 90. 



38 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Helios, Isis with Demeter, Osiris with 
Dionysos. With this theoretical syn- 
cretism a practical comity was con- 
joined to some extent. There were 
priests who functioned in the temples 
of more than one of the mystic cults. 29 
On the part of Mithraism a special 
motive may have operated in favor 
of this composite role. Unlike the 
other Mysteries the Mithraic seem not 
to have admitted women. " Among 
the hundreds of inscriptions that have 
come down to us not one mentions 
either a priestess, a woman initiate, 
or even a donatress." 30 We are left 
then to infer that the predilection for 
mystic rites which may have been 
felt by the women connected with the 
initiates of Mithraism had to be sat- 
isfied outside of the proper Mithraic 
domain. 



29 Boissier, La Religion Romaine, I, 430; Cumont, The Mys- 
teries of Mithra, p. 177. 

so Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, p. 173. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 39 



CHAPTER II 

SOME SPECIAL PHASES IN THE 
CONTENT OR HISTORY OF 
THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

In connection with some of these 
religions very little will need to be 
added to what was said in the pre- 
ceding chapter. Respecting the Eleu- 
sinian Mysteries it may properly be 
noticed that, while in the time of 
Herodotus initiation was limited to 
the Greeks, at a later period those of 
other nationalities who understood the 
Greek language and had the status 
of Roman citizens were eligible to 
admission when presenting themselves 
at Eleusis at the time of the annual 
celebration in September and October. 
Initiation was understood to establish 
a close bond with the divinities who 



40 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

were specially commemorated, but it 
was not regarded as shutting one up 
to an exclusive scheme of worship. 
Among the divinities recognized, the 
benignant Earth Mother, Demeter, was 
central. The Maiden or Daughter, 
Kore (or Persephone), was prominent 
as an accessory to the role of Demeter. 
The statue of Iacchus was conspicuous 
in the solemn procession from Athens 
to Eleusis. According to one interpre- 
tation he represented a special form of 
Dionysos; according to another he was 
a divinity of subordinate rank. 1 Di- 
onysos had a place in the Eleusinian 
rites, but not so much in his original 
Thracian character, as a patron of 
ecstasy, as in that of a fosterer of the 
arts and of agriculture. Of the two 
classes of initiates, the mystes and 
the epopts, it is conjectured that the 



J The former is represented by Legge, The Forerunners and 
Rivals of Christianity, I, 40, and by W. S. Fox, in The Mythology 
of All Nations, I. 220; the latter is advocated by Foucart, Les 
Myst^res d'Eleusip. p. 113. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 41 

latter were introduced by rites in 
which Dionysos was relatively prom- 
inent. 2 They represented an ad- 
vanced grade of initiation, which was 
not esteemed necessary to salvation, 
and by a large proportion was not 
taken. 

Orphism in the course of its develop- 
ment made connection, on the one 
hand, with the cult of Dionysos, and 
on the other with Greek philosophy. 
It was drawn to the former by a high 
appreciation of prophetical inspiration, 
and is presumed to have qualified to 
some extent the orgiastic feature at- 
tached to that cult in certain quarters. 
In respect of philosophy it affiliated 
especially with the Pythagorean teach- 
ing. Among the Mystery Religions it 
was relatively distinguished by its 
moral earnestness, though sharing in 
the common fault of an ultra cere- 

2 Foucart, pp. 452-454. 



42 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

monialism. 3 While not given to the 
more extreme forms of ascetic practice, 
it adopted the ascetic point of view 
in that it radically disparaged the 
\ sense life as being incompatible with 
the true life of the spirit. In connec- 
tion with this phase of its teaching 
it held a peculiar doctrine of original 
sin. For this a basis was found in 
the story of Dionysos-Zagreus. As the 
mythical narrative runs, Zagreus, the 
offspring of Zeus and Persephone, was 
attacked by the Titans at the instiga- 
tion of the jealous Hera. They tore 
his body in pieces which they pro- 
ceeded to devour. However, his heart 
remained intact, and this being brought 
to Zeus, he swallowed it or caused 
it to be swallowed by Semele. In 
the issue Zagreus was reborn under 
the name of Dionysos, and his mur- 
derers, the Titans, were cast into 

3 This view of the relative prominence of the moral factor in 
Orphism, though often expressed, is challenged by F. Legge, Fore- 
runners and Rivals of Christianity, I, 145-147. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 43 

Tartarus. Since men, in respect of 
their bodies, were formed from the 
ashes of the Titans, they share in the 
guilt of their unholy predecessors, and 
need the virtue of purifying rites in 
order to be set free from the evil 
inheritance. 4 In harmony with the 
temper of their system the Orphists 
took a solemn view of future awards. 
They pictured grievous punishments 
for the wicked, though not representing 
them as endless. With Pythagoras 
they held that a, single term of earthly 
life is not likely to accomplish the 
needed purification, and that accord- 
ingly a more or less prolonged series 
of reembodiments is to be expected. 
That the soul is intrinsica ly immortal 
they regarded as quite certain. 

As has been indicated, the Phrygian 
cult of Cybele and Attis was charac- 

4 S. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, II, 59; Rohde, Psyche, 
II, 116ff.; Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of the 
Greek Religion, pp. 481-497. 



44 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

terized by a very pronounced reference 
to the interests of vegetable and animal 
life. "In the attributes, functions, and 
form of the goddess, we can discern 
nothing celestial, solar, or lunar; she 
was and remained to the end a mother- 
goddess of the earth, a personal source 
of the life of fruits, beasts, and man." 5 
Attis, associated with her as lover, hus- 
band, or son, figured by his death and 
resurrection the yearly decay and re- 
vival of vegetation. According to one 
version of his mythological history he 
was slain by a boar; according to 
another he died from self-mutilation. 
The great festival of Cybele and Attis 
occurred in early spring, beginning on 
the twenty-second of March and con- 
tinuing for several days. The celebra- 
tion was so conducted as to work up 
a great excitement in the participants. 
"In the midst of their orgies, and after 
wild dances, some of the worshipers 

6 Farnell, Greece and Babylon, p. 109. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 45 

voluntarily wounded themselves, and 
becoming intoxicated with the view of 
the blood, with which they besprinkled 
their altars, they believed they were 
uniting themselves with their divinity. 
Or else, arriving at a paroxysm of 
frenzy, they sacrificed their virility to 
the gods. These men became priests 
of Cybele and were called Galli." 6 
Crude and abhorrent as these features 
may appear, they did not precipitate 
an early downfall of the strange re- 
ligion. The worship of Cybele and 
Attis survived the establishment of 
Christianity by Constantine. 7 

The effective appeal which the Egyp- 
tian cult of Isis, Osiris, and Serapis 
was able to make to the peoples in- 
cluded in the Roman empire was due 
primarily, in no small degree, to the 
potent relation which these divinities 



6 Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 50. 

7 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 250. 



46 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

were represented to hold at once to 
the realm of life and to that of death. 
This double relation was figured my- 
thologically in the account of Osiris 
which became imbedded in Egyptian 
traditions. As the story goes, Osiris, 
the offspring of an intrigue between 
the earth-god Seb and the sky-goddess 
Nut, fulfilled a beneficent vocation 
in promoting the cultivation of the 
soil and the advance of civilization. 
But he was at length exposed to the 
malicious plotting of his brother Set, 
who caused him to be inclosed in a 
chest and to be cast into the Nile. 
The chest was discovered by Isis, 
both sister and spouse of Osiris. It 
was not, however, so securely hidden 
by her, but that it passed under the 
hand of Set, who cut the inclosed 
body into fourteen pieces and scat- 
tered them widely. The faithful Isis 
spared no pains to gather the pieces. 
The body of the god was thus recom- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 47 

posed and he became installed as king 
of the dead. As a favorite divinity he 
had other roles assigned to him, among 
them that of a sun-god. His most 
vital association, however, was with 
the contrasted realms of life and death. 
In him was symbolized the ever-waning 
and continually reviving life of the 
earth. A kindred significance belonged 
to Isis in her association with him. 
On 'the score of her reputed sympathy 
and compassion she won a wide appre- 
ciation. In some instances she was 
idealized and universalized as a prin- 
ciple of divine wisdom. Plutarch in- 
terpreted her as standing for "that 
property of nature which is feminine 
or receptive of all production." 8 On 
the whole, she probably received in 
the general range of the Roman empire 
more warmth of devotion than any 
other Egyptian divinity. As for 



8 Of Isis and Osiris, $53. 



48 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Serapis, he was essentially the product 
of a governmental scheme. The first 
of the Ptolemies (B. C. 323-285) 
instituted or forwarded his worship as 
one in which Greeks and Egyptians 
might unite. Not a few scholars have 
interpreted the name "Serapis" as 
simply a shortened form of "Osiris- 
Apis." Whether this is a true render- 
ing or not, "Serapis" was quite com- 
monly regarded as the equivalent of 
"Osiris." It was in this character 
that he was accepted by his Egyptian 
worshipers. 

Like Vishnu and some others of 
the Hindu deities, the Persian god 
Mithra was one who made great ad- 
vances in respect of relative position 
in the course of history. His recog- 
nition began, indeed, at a very ancient 
date, a place having been accorded 
him in the Vedic system where he 
appears under the name of Mitra. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 49 

As originally rated in the Zoroastrian 
system, he stood with the genii, twenty- 
eight in number, who were created by 
Ahura Mazda and were closely asso- 
ciated with the pure elements. In 
virtue of the fact that he was accounted 
the genius of the celestial light Mithra 
had from the start a certain kinship 
with his creator, but plainly was a 
being of subordinate rank. Formally 
the aspect of subordination may not 
have been canceled at any period, but 
practically it came in the end to be 
set aside. While Mithra continued to 
be assigned the office of mediator, to 
a large extent religious dependence was 
directed rather to him than to the 
higher and remoter deity. On the 
one hand, he attracted devotion by 
his friendly character. Men were 
solicited to look to him as a kindly 
and responsive benefactor. In this 
respect he bears comparison with 
Apollo and the Dioscuri of the Greeks. 



50 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

On the other hand, he commanded 
allegiance as the embodiment of war- 
rior might and virtue. He was reputed 
to be the guardian of the oath and a 
despiser of falsehood, and so was 
qualified to appeal to those who put 
a stanch moral ideal to the front. 
As compared with the gods of other 
Mysteries, he was more of a sky god, 
less a god of the underworld or realm 
of the dead. This, however, is not 
to be understood as denying that he 
figured as a succorer of the dead. 
Like the other divinities he was es- 
teemed a source of procreation and 
fruitfulness and an agent of resurrec- 
tion. It is seen, then, that Mithraism 
possessed features favorable to propa- 
gandism. With these were combined 
some that were not so favorable. The 
very scanty regard which it paid to 
women was in particular a serious 
limitation. Then, too, some of its 
rites could hardly have been agreeable 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 51 

to the more cultured among either 
Greeks or Romans. This holds espe- 
cially of the ceremony known as the 
taurobolium, in which the devotee, 
seeking purification, stood under a 
latticed platform and was drenched 
with the blood of a bull slain above. 
The like ceremony, it is true, is credited 
to the cult of Cybele; indeed, in its 
Mithraic use it is thought to have been 
borrowed from that source; 9 but in 
either connection it must have been 
the reverse of a recommendation to 
many people. As respects the extent 
to which Mithraism gained a footing 
in the Graeco-Roman world there seems 
to be a tendency among scholarly 
investigators to question the warrant 
for the strong statements which have 
sometimes been made. Against Re- 
nan's representation that at one time 
this religion bade fair to dispute the 



9 Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 86, 87, 179-182; Legge, 
Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, II, 258, 259. 



52 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ascendency of Christianity in the Ro- 
man empire, attention is called to 
the fact that the evidence fails to 
prove that Mithraism ever prevailed 
widely outside the cantonments of the 
Roman legions. Furthermore, as is 
indicated by the map which Cumont 
has prepared, we have the fact that 
it failed to strike root in most of the 
territory which could boast a high 
stage of culture. "Almost the entire 
domain of Hellenism/ ' says Harnack, 
"was closed to it, and consequently 
Hellenism itself. Greece, Macedonia, 
Thrace, Bithynia, Asia (proconsular), 
the central provinces of Asia Minor 
(apart from Cappadocia), Syria, Pales- 
tine, and Egypt — none of these ever 
had any craving for the cult of Mithra. 
And these were the civilized countries 
by preeminence. They were closed 
to Mithra, and as he thus failed to 
get into touch at all, or at an early 
stage at any rate, with Hellenism, his 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 53 

cult was condemned to the position of 
a barbarous conventicle. Now these 
were the very regions in which Chris- 
tianity found an immediate and open 
welcome, the result being that the 
latter religion came at once into vital 
contact with Hellenism." 10 The his- 
torian adds that even in the West, 
where Mithraism had a relatively wide 
expansion, there is inadequate ground 
to conclude that it became "any real 
rival of Christianity.' ' 

The more significant features in the 
teaching of the Hermetic writings have 
already been indicated. Reference was 
made to their inclusion of both panthe- 
istic and dualistic strains and to their 
tribute to the current sidereal mysti- 
cism. The character of the collection, 
made up as it was of about a score 
of independent parts, composed at 



10 The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three 
Centuries, II, 318-321. 



54 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

different periods, naturally precluded 
strict uniformity in doctrine. 11 It has 
been noticed that Cumont assigns to 
this literature a less extensive role 
than that favored by some others. 
He says: "This recondite literature, 
often contradictory, was apparently 
developed between B. C. 50 and A. D. 
150. It has considerable importance 
in relation to the diffusion throughout 
the Roman empire of certain doctrines 
of sidereal religion molded to suit 
Egyptian ideas. But it had only a 
secondary influence. It was not at 
Alexandria that this form of paganism 
was either produced or chiefly de- 
veloped, but among the neighboring 
Semitic peoples." 12 One of the pecu- 
liar doctrines in this literature is thus 
stated: "The Master of eternity is 
the first God, the world is the second, 



u Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 190. 

^Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans, 
pp. 76, 77. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 55 

and man is the third." 13 Another 
peculiar representation is that at first 
all the animals were hermaphrodite, 
as well as man, and that the division 
into sexes occurred at the same time 
for the human and the animal species. 14 
A third peculiar notion concerns the 
mediatorial function of genii, or spirits 
of a non-human order. "The intel- 
ligible world," it is said, "is attached 
to God, the sensible world to the 
intelligible world, and through these 
two worlds the sun conducts the efflu- 
ence of God that is creative energy. 
Around him are the eight spheres 
which are bound to him — the sphere 
of the fixed stars, the six spheres of 
the planets, and that which surrounds 
the earth. To these spheres the genii 
are bound, and to the genii men; 



13 This occurs in the section entitled "Asklepios," which Lafaye 
contends must be located in the Neo-Platonic period, Histoire du 
Culte des DivinitSs d'Alexandrie, p. 85. 

14 Corpus Hermeticum, I, 18. (Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, 
vol. ii, p. 12.) 



56 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

and thus are all beings bound to God, 
who is the universal Father." 15 Among 
the higher elements in these writings 
are the worthy stress which is placed 
upon the goodness of God, the em- 
phatic valuation of a true knowledge of 
God, and the clear enunciation of the 
doctrine of the souPs immortality. 



16 Kingford and Maitland, The Hermetic Works, The Virgin of 
the World, p. 106. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 57 



CHAPTER III 

DISTINCTIVE POINTS IN WHICH 
THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 
SHOW AGREEMENT OR CON- 
TRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY 

By Christianity in this connection 
is meant the Christian religion in 
its New Testament stage. It is per- 
fectly conceivable that in the course 
of its development post-apostolic, and 
still more post-Constantinian, Chris- 
tianity may have taken on charac- 
teristics akin to those of the Mystery 
Religions. The question of intrinsic or 
original resemblances or contrasts is 
obviously very different from the ques- 
tion of ultimate likeness or unlikeness. 

Another discrimination is appropri- 
ately kept in mind. Agreement, even 
up to a conspicuous degree, is no 



58 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

decisive proof of borrowing. In view 
of their kindred aims and objects, all 
religions are bound to exhibit resem- 
bling features; and where the religions 
are attached to similar planes of cul- 
ture the resemblances cannot well es- 
cape being appreciable. Were one 
disposed to go in quest of points of 
likeness between Christianity and the 
classic religions of Greece and Rome, 
he could undoubtedly fashion a rather 
full catalogue. But no judicial mind 
would take his list as a demonstration 
that Christianity was originated by a 
process of selection from the pre- 
existing classic systems of faith and 
practice. The Mystery Religions in 
some parts of their content may seem 
to excel the classic systems in respect 
of affinity with Christian points of 
view, and so to be more probable 
sources of shaping influence. But 
this relative closeness of approach 
along certain lines is remote from being 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 59 

a positive proof of effective working 
in the domain of primitive Christian- 
ity. So far as theory goes, it would 
involve no breach of logic to assume 
that New Testament Christianity, in 
rounding out its system in harmony 
with its fundamental postulates, was 
under compulsion to incorporate some 
features which were more or less char- 
acteristic of the Mystery Religions, 
and would have done so if those re- 
ligions had been absolutely out of 
sight. Of course, too, in so far as 
these ethnic cults were themselves in 
process of development, the way lies 
open to the assumption that they may 
have been in some respects affected by 
Christian influence, which, if we may 
judge by the outcome, was decidedly 
the most potent leaven at work in 
the Grseco-Roman world. It is not 
enough, then, to take note of the 
fact that a given Mystery was in 
existence at a certain pre-Christian 



60 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

date. We need to know also whether 
the specific features which serve as 
a ground of comparison with Chris- 
tianity were certainly pre-Christian. 

One further discrimination is natu- 
rally suggested. The supposition that 
the Mystery Religions incorporated a 
certain body of truth akin to the 
content of Christianity is not nec- 
essarily regarded as a disparagement 
to the latter. What Clement of Alex- 
andria said of Greek philosophy, 
namely, that it had the office of a 
schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic 
mind to Christ, might conceivably be 
said of the Mystery Religions. The 
primacy of Christianity is not denied 
by any agencies that prepare the 
ground for its own ultimate dominion. 

As a matter of fact it is not im- 
probable that the points of kinship 
between Christianity and the Mys- 
teries served to facilitate the accep- 
tance of the former by one and an- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 61 

other initiate, while yet the important 
points of contrast earned for the Mys- 
teries the emphatic reprobation of the 
apostolic writers. 

In an important outward respect the 
Mystery Religions undoubtedly resem- 
bled early Christianity. Making room 
for exceptions, we can say that as a 
class they were relatively detached i 
from national associations and national 
control. Like the Christians, their 
votaries were gathered into voluntary 
brotherhoods wherein the chief bonds 
were a common faith and the use of 
common rites. Governmental patron- 
age might further their advance, but 
independently of it they could thrive 
in any quarter where they were able 
to appeal successfully to individual 
men in quest of religious satisfaction. 

It is also quite certain that the 
Mystery Religions were akin to Chris- 
tianity in the earnest attempt which 
they made to minister to the hopes u 



62 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

of men in relation to the future life. 
In them the point of view of ancient 
Babylon and classic Greece was tran- 
scended, and a worthful immortality, 
as opposed to a vacant and pithless 
existence, was held in prospect. They 
fostered a vital impression of the 
greatness of eternal interests, and what- 
ever artificialities may have entered 
into their scheme for safeguarding 
those interests, they undertook an 
office similar to that of Christianity 
in assuming to lead men into a way 
of security as respects the attainment 
of a priceless good. 

Some of the sacred rites commonly 
in vogue in the Mysteries were anal- 
ogous to the cardinal rites of the 
Christian Church. Confident judg- 
ment here is properly regarded as 
materially abridged by our very scanty 
information respecting the ceremonies 
which the Mysteries placed under the 
ban of secrecy. It is quite generally 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 63 

believed, however, that they included 
transactions somewhat resembling the 
Christian rites of baptism and the 
eucharist. 

In emphasizing heart-allegiance to a 
divine person, with whom redemptive 
offices were associated, the Mystery 
Religions were in line with a leading 
feature of Christianity. On this point, 
doubtless, they were not radically dis- 
tinguished from other non-Christian 
faiths. Somewhat of the same ele- 
ment may be found in religions gen- 
erally. But relatively they were dis- 
tinguished by the great stress which 
they placed upon the close^persanal 
relation of the initiates with the 
saviour-gods in whose name the mystic 
rites were administered. 

Mention might further be made of 
eschatological particulars in which the 
Mystery Religions stood close to Chris- 
tian beliefs. Mithraism especially 
could be cited as presenting something 



U 



64 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

like equivalents for Christian repre- 
sentations respecting ascension, resur- 
rection of the dead, visitation of the 
world by fire, judgment and sentencing 
of men, according to their deserts, to 
heaven or to hell. It would be rash, 
however to infer from the correspond- 
ence any direct borrowing of Mithraic 
materials by Christianity. It is very 
doubtful whether Mithraism had come 
into any real contact with the Chris- 
tian domain when the New Testament 
was written. 1 

On the side of contrasts we have 
in the first place the fact that Chris- 
tianity presented itself to the world 
as an open system, not a fenced-off 
mystery. It made no attempt to 
store up its treasures behind locked 
and bolted doors. Free access to its 
whole message was offered to every 

1 Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, pp. xix, 
xx; Kennedy, St. Paul, and the Mystery Religions, pp. 114, 115; 
Hatnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, II, 318-321. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 65 

man. In so far as seclusion was 
sought for any of its rites it was at 
the dictate of a prudent desire to 
avoid profanation at the hands of a 
scornful and hostile multitude. It had 
nothing which was accounted as nec- 
essarily debarred to the sight of the 
public. Somewhat of a counter cur- 
rent was indeed started after a period. 
In some measure the point of view 
embodied in the secret cult of the 
Mysteries was entertained by the 
Alexandrian fathers in the third cen- 
tury, and it gained distinct recog- 
nition in the Disciplina Arcana in the 
fourth century. 2 But this was a de- 
velopment which was foreign to the 
Christianity of the first century. If 
we may judge from the implicit con- 
tradiction of it contained in the 
writings of Justin Martyr, it had not 
made appreciable headway at the mid- 
dle of the second century. 

8 Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen, pp. 126ff. 



1 



66 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

In a second respect the Christian- 
ity of the New Testament age was 
widely distinguished from the Mystery 
Religions. As has been demonstrated 
a naturalistic basis was very prominent 
in them. The divinities in whom they 
were centered were primarily nature 
powers, the potencies of vegetable and 
animal life, and the experiences of 
death and resurrection celebrated in 
connection with them were symbolic 
of alternate decay and revival in the 
sphere of natural life. Herein they 
were at a great remove from Chris- 
tianity, which set the divine power 
distinctly above the world, and as- 
serted for its characteristic function 
the governance and direction of the 
spiritual and ethical. In this one 
feature alone it stood apart from them 
by an incalculable interval. 

The extent to which the Mystery 
Religions appropriated astrology and 
sidereal mysticism in general may be 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 67 

accounted a special expression of their 
naturalistic bent. All this was foreign 
to primitive Christianity. The New 
Testament, it is true, gives expression 
to the thought of a plurality of heavens; 
but the reference is purely incidental 
and subserves rather a rhetorical than 
a dogmatic purpose. No countenance 
whatever is given to the artificial 
scheme of the descent and ascent of 
souls, through diverse spheres, which 
came to be installed in the leading 
Mystery Religions. 

The dominance of magic in this 
class of religions presents a further 
ground of contrast with original Chris- 
tianity. Those, indeed, who allege 
that the apostolic writers conceived of 
the Christian rites, such as baptism 
and the eucharist, as working ex opere 
operato (or by the simple virtue of 
the ritual transaction) charge upon 
New Testament Christianity a species 
of magic. It may be that in the 



68 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

technical definition magic stands for 
expedients counted strangely effica- 
cious to force the divine will. But 
expedients which are considered to have 
the sanction of the divine will, in so 
far as an arbitrary efficacy is pred- 
icated of them, or they are assigned 
results quite outside their plane, may 
be said without abuse of language 
to have a magical aspect. The New 
Testament, then, if the given allega- 
tion is correct, cannot well be excused 
from admitting an element of magic. 
Our conviction, which we shall en- 
deavor to sustain in subsequent pages, 
is that the allegation respecting the 
apostolic understanding of the Chris- 
tian rites is essentially unfounded, 3 
and that consequently New Testa- 
ment Christianity is very decidedly 
contrasted with the Mystery Religions 
as respects giving countenance to 
magic. That a relative contrast is 

3 See Chapters V and VI. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 69 

to be affirmed, no reputable scholar, 
it is believed, would care to dispute. 
We notice, on the part of a New 
Testament critic who attributes to the 
apostolic writers the ex opere operato 
view of the sacraments, this judgment 
on the Mystery Religion as a whole: 
"It was weak intellectually and eth- 
ically; it had not cut itself off from 
mythology, and its ethic was lower 
than that of Seneca or of the philos- 
ophers in general." 4 No such state- 
ment, most assuredly, can be made 
respecting the New Testament. The 
cogency with which it sets the ethical 
point of view on high puts it in un- 
mistakable contrast with the Mystery 
Religions. Even if one should suppose 
that it contains a magical element, he 
must grant that it • does not permit 
that element to overshadow the moral 
after the mode and the measure of the 
ethnic systems. 

4 Kirsopp Lake, The Stewardship of Faith, p. 86. 



70 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Once more the Mystery Religions 
appear in contrast with original Chris- 
tianity in their syncretistic bent, or 
readiness to make exchanges among 
themselves, and to acknowledge the 
essential identity of one with another. 
A consciousness of a very different 
order ruled in the Christian domain. 
There the idea of striking hands with 
any contemporary cult was radically 
discountenanced. The votaries of 
Christianity were firmly convinced that 
their religion was grounded in actual 
historic revelation, and had its essen- 
tial content given in that revelation, 
so that it could not be made over 
for the accommodation of any party, 
without a most culpable recreancy to 
the truth. Doubtless the partisans 
of the Mysteries had a certain faith 
in the reality of the divinities whom 
they celebrated, and were far from 
admitting formally that their careers, 
as figured in the customary rites, 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 71 

were purely mythological. But the 
available evidences for this faith were 
dim and scanty. A basis of assurance, 
like that contained in the living Chris- 
tian tradition, was not attainable. In 
fact, a readiness to compound one cult 
with another was a half confession 
that all alike belonged to the sphere 
of symbolism, and were to be rated 
in their concrete representations as 
rather mythological than historical. 
Locally and temporarily these cults 
may have derived advantage from the 
policy of comity and accommodation, 
but they were not fitted to stand out 
against a religion which carried the 
assurance of historic foundations. 



72 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 



CHAPTER IV 

THE QUESTION OF PAUL'S IN- 
DEBTEDNESS TO THE MYS- 
TERY RELIGIONS FOR CHAR- 
ACTERISTIC TERMS AND 
IDEAS 

The propriety of distinguishing be- 
tween the two forms of indebtedness 
is quite obvious. Scholars who deny 
that the apostle derived anything sub- 
stantial, in the way of ideas, from the 
Mystery Religions are free to admit 
that he may have appropriated certain 
terms which came from that quarter. 
Thus Schweitzer remarks: "Paulinism 
and Hellenism have in common their 
religious terminology, but in respect 
of ideas, nothing. The apostle did 
not Hellenise Christianity. His con- 
ceptions are equally distinct from those 
of Greek philosophy and from those 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 73 

of Mystery Religions. The affinities 
which have been alleged cannot stand 
an examination which takes account 
of their real essence and of the different 
way in which the ideas are condi- 
tioned in the two cases." 1 Much to 
the same effect are the words of 
Clemen. Referring to certain Pauline 
terms which admit of comparison with 
the language of the Mysteries, he says, 
"It is a mere question of forms of 
expression; in themselves they prove 
absolutely nothing as to an influence 
of the Mystery Religions on the Paul- 
ine theology." 2 The like point is 
urged by Ramsay in the broad state- 
ment: "The influence of Greek thought 
on Paul, though real, is all surely 
external. Hellenism never touches the 
life and essence of Paulinism which is 
fundamentally and absolutely Hebrew; 
but it does strongly affect the expres- 

1 Paul and His Interpreters, p. 238. 

2 Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das alteste Christen- 
tum, pp. 29, 30. 



74 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

sion of Paul's teaching." 3 The cita- 
tion speaks of "Hellenism," but Ram- 
say makes it plain that he would 
not have put a less emphatic limitation 
on Paul's borrowing had the reference 
been specifically to the Mystery Re- 
ligions. Of course it is theoretically 
possible that within limits Paul may 
have borrowed ideas as well as taken 
up forms of expression from the con- 
temporary cults. What needs to be 
kept in mind is that the latter is no 
adequate proof of the former. 

In respect of terms, it is less easy 
than might be imagined at first thought 
to determine the measure in which 
Paul's phraseology was under specific 
obligation to the Mysteries. Some of 
his characteristic terms may have been 
at hand in the current religio-philo- 
sophical dialect of the Greek-speaking 
world, so that there was no need of 
recourse to the Mystery cults to gain 

3 The Teachings of Paul in Terms of the Present Day, pp. 161, 162. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 75 

a suggestion of their employment. 
Others of them can be regarded as 
having an Hebraic foundation, as be- 
ing suggested by forms of expression 
in the Hebrew Bible, such as the 
alert mind of the apostle could render, 
with or without assistance from the 
Septuagint version, into the Greek 
equivalents which his thought de- 
manded. A fair application of these 
considerations, it is believed, will appre- 
ciably reduce the list of Pauline words 
which can confidently be referred to 
the Mystery Religions as their in- 
dubitable source. Among the words 
which come into discussion are the 
following: [ivGryjpcov, refaiog, nvevpa as 
distinguished both from $v%n and 
vovg, nvevftartxog, $v%Lx6g, yv&Gcg, dyvo- 
aia, cpLrti^eiv, h6%a, eix&v, [lETa^op- 
(povodcu, g&^egQoli, Gcdtyjpta, and xvoiog 
as a distinctive title of Christ. 

The term ^cvaryiptov occurs upward 
of a dozen times in the Pauline Epis- 



76 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ties. 4 The thoroughly predominant 
sense in which it is used is that of 
plan, purpose, or prospective event 
which is hidden from ordinary research 
and needs to be made known by 
revelation or authoritative instruction. 
What at first sight might be taken 
as an exception occurs in Ephesians 
v. 32, where the term is applied to 
marriage. To bring this into line 
with the apostle's customary use we 
should need to think of the marriage 
union of man and woman as in a 
hidden way expressive or symbolical 
of the great truth of the union of 
Christ and the church. In the Septua- 
gint, where the term occurs nearly 
as many times as in the Pauline 
Epistles, it has in like manner refer- 
ence to plans and counsels which are, 
in fact, hidden, though not necessarily 
occult in nature. No reason is, there- 



* Rom. xi. 25; 1 Cor. ii. 7, iv. 1, xiv. 2, xv. 51; Eph. i. 9, iii. 3, 4, 
9, v. 32, vi. 19; Col. i. 26, 27, iv. 3; 1 Tim. iii. 16. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 77 

fore, apparent why the apostle should 
be regarded as beholden to the Mystery 
Religions so far as his general use 
of the term fivarrjpLov is concerned. 
That use had been naturalized before 
his day in Jewish circles. 

With a somewhat better show of 
reason it may be urged that PauTs 
use of the word [ivorrjptov in connec- 
tion with r&eiog (1 Cor. ii. 1-10), 
argues for his indebtedness to the 
Mysteries, since rkXeioc, was a tech- 
nical term for designating the standing 
of an initiate. This basis, however, 
is too fragile to support a positive 
conclusion. To whatever extent teXstoq 
may have been installed in the dia- 
lect of the Mysteries prior to PauPs 
day, there is good reason to believe 
that it was used outside of them in 
much the same sense in which it was 
used by him, namely, to designate 
maturity or relative perfection, as 
opposed to an initial stage of develop- 



78 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ment. It occurs in that sense with 
Philo, 5 an older contemporary of Paul, 
and the same use is very closely 
approached in the Septuagint. 6 If the 
apostle needed to borrow from ante- 
cedent usage he could easily do so 
without recourse to the Mystery Re- 
ligions. The most that can rightly 
be claimed for that source is contained 
jn these words of a writer whose pains- 
taking review of the subject renders 
excellent service: "In view of the 
earlier associations of the communities 
which Paul addresses, we cannot cer- 
tainly rule out the suggestion that 
the Mystery-atmosphere is to some 
extent present, although plainly no 
conclusion can be drawn from this 
term as to Paul's personal attitude 
toward the Mystery conceptions." 7 



6 Opera, Graece et Latine, Erlangen, vol. i, pp. 302, 324; English 
translation by Yonge, Allegories of the Sacred Laws, Book hi, 
{§xxxiii, xlvii, xlviii. 

o 1 Chron. xxv. 8. 

7 Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, pp. 134, 135. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 79 

A basis for Paul's psychological 
terms is largely supplied by the Old 
Testament. His <xap£, ^xh^ and 
nvevfia correspond in a general way 
to the Hebrew basar, nephesh, and 
ruach. In either case the third term 
has a double connotation. It may 
denote either the divine Spirit which 
replenishes man with a higher life, 
or it may signify the finite human 
spirit. In the latter sense it is not 
very clearly and uniformly distin- 
guished from the second factor, either 
in the Pauline or the Old Testament 
writings. We may say that spirit is 
the preferred term where there is a 
wish to emphasize the life of man in 
its Godward relations, whereas soul 
is employed when the reference is 
simply to the center of man's personal 
life; but in some instances the soul 
seems to be taken as equivalent to 
man's supersensuous being without 
restriction as to its relations. Peculi- 



80 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

arities of the Pauline terminology are 
the use of the term cdp£ in opposition 
to moral good and the sharp antithesis 
which is made between the adjective 
terms ^vftixog and nvevparcxog, the 
one being applied to man as pre- 
dominantly a subject of the earthly 
sense life, and the other describing 
him as he is under the rule of the 
spiritual and divine. With the latter 
term vovg is associated so far as oppo- 
sition to the flesh is concerned (Rom. 
vii. 23, 25); but it is in a measure 
distinguished from the nvev^ia since 
it is the seat especially of the reflective 
intelligence, and gives place to the 
other term when the reference is to 
ecstatic fellowship with God (1 Cor. 
xiv. 14, 15). In these peculiarities the 
apostle represents an appreciable de- 
velopment beyond the Old Testament. 
That contains, it is true, a strong con- 
trast between flesh and spirit, but it 
is the contrast between the feebleness 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 81 

and transitoriness of man's physical 
frame and the everlasting might of 
the divine Spirit, not the ethical con- 
trast which is set forth in the Pauline 
Epistles. On what antecedents did 
Paul base his special usage? Not 
unequivocally on Hellenic antecedents, 
for these do not present an exact 
counterpart. In Orphism, in the Pla- 
tonic philosophy, and in some other 
Hellenic domains, we doubtless find 
the sense life and the life of the spirit 
strongly opposed. But here matter is 
made intrinsically unfriendly to spirit, 
so that the embodied life is necessarily 
regarded as at a disadvantage in com- 
parison with the disembodied. This is 
remote from Paul's standpoint. With 
him the body is a subject for sanctifica- 
tion and glorification, and holds a per- 
manent place in the ideal for man. 
Consequently, it is made perfectly plain 
that he uses flesh (crap?) in a pregnant 
sense, denoting by it rather the unre- 



82 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

newed man, who is so easily led cap- 
tive by fleshly impulses, than the 
material substance as such. His usage 
is neither Hebrew nor Hellenic. It 
may be indebted for suggestions to 
both, but prudent scholarship will 
hesitate to deny its individualistic 
character and will be slow to force 
it to wear a foreign badge. Paul's 
opposition between adp£ and nvevfia 
is more Pauline than anything else. 
It does not conform to any Hellenic 
pattern whether inside or outside the 
Mysteries. How is it with the other 
phase of his terminology which lacks 
a distinct Old Testament basis, the 
antithesis between ^v%lx6s and 
nvEVfianxog? The latter term was 
very likely well naturalized in the 
Mysteries, being accounted especially 
appropriate to one who had reached 
the goal of ecstatic union with the 
divinity. On the other hand, there 
seems to be a serious lack of evidence 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 83 

that in the terminology of the Mysteries 
the formal antithesis between ^vxixog 
and nvevpartxog, in the Pauline sense, 
was current. Its appearance in Gnos- 
ticism proves nothing to the contrary, 
for the Pauline writings were one of 
the sources of Gnosticism as known 
to us. We conclude, then, that in 
respect of psychological terms Paul is 
not shown to have been, in any 
notable degree, a borrower from the 
Mystery Religions. He derived sug- 
gestions from both the Hebrew and 
the Hellenic domains. He was not a 
servile copyist of any set of ante- 
cedents. The evidence of his indebted- 
ness specifically to the Mysteries is 
tenuous and conjectural. 8 

8 We add judgments of H. W. Robinson and E. D. Burton. 
The former says: "Paul, in spite of the use of some Greek terms 
('inner man,' 'mind,' 'conscience'), remains psychologically what 
he calls himself, a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; the advances he makes 
on the conceptions of the Old Testament are a natural Jewish 
development, whilst their originality can be shown as compared 
with Palestinian Judaism, as well as with the Hellenistic thought 
of Alexandria. His modifications of Jewish thought are primarily 
due to his personal experience, and such Hellenistic influences as 
were inevitable in his period were unconsciously imbibed by Paul 



84 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

The stress placed upon revelation 
as a source of the higher and more 
efficacious knowledge, in both the Paul- 
ine writings and the Mystery Religions, 
involves a certain kinship in their 
use of such terms as yvoag and its 
opposite dyvQola. The similar point 
of view would of necessity involve a 
similar use of terms. Moreover, it is 
to be observed that as a student of 
the literature of the Old Testament, 
Paul was definitely introduced to the 
representation of a knowledge or wis- 
dom which comes by the gift of the 
divine Spirit. 9 Once more, it is not 

and subordinated or assimilated to his Jewish psychology" (The 
Christian Doctrine of Man, p. 104). Burton notices that the 
psychological usage of the Hermetic writings is rather broadly 
contrasted with that of Paul. He also contends that the sig- 
nificance which the apostle attached to the crdpl; is not to be de- 
rived from any known Hellenic antecedents. "The flesh that 
makes for evil," he says, "is not the body or matter as such, but 
an inherited impulse to evil. . . . The whole evidence of the Synopti- 
cal Gospels tends to confirm the impression gained from the study 
of Paul, that his usage is not as a whole a reflection of common 
usage in his day, but to an important extent the result either of 
exceptional influences or his own thinking" (American Journal 
of Theology, October, 1916, pp. 550, 586, 589). 

9 Hosea, ii. 20, v. 4; Isa. xi. 2; Prov. ii. 5; 1 Kings, x. 24; Job, 
xxxii. 8; Psa. cxix. 144. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 85 

to be overlooked that in Paul's teach- 
ing there is a special phase, in that it 
sets forth knowledge as profoundly 
conditioned ethically, as indeed being 
of no worth at all apart from love. 
These facts may well modify a dog- 
matic impulse to translate the similar- 
ities into certain evidence of borrow- 
ing from the ethnic systems. The 
possibility that the apostle was influ- 
enced in this part of his vocabulary 
by the atmosphere of the Mysteries 
may be admitted, but the warrant for 
a confident assumption is not apparent. 
As for the Hermetic literature, which 
is alleged to present in particular 
parallels to the Pauline use of the 
terms in question, the date of its 
composition and collection leaves room 
for the supposition that through the 
channel of Gnosticism it may have 
appropriated at one point or another 
a tinge of Pauline phraseology. 
The most important of the remain- 



86 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ing terms which come into considera- 
tion is xvpiog. Little occasion exists 
for a specific dealing with $o?%£tv, 
ho%a, six&v, (j.e?a[iop<pov6dcu, a^eadou, 
and GaytYjpla. Plain suggestions of all 
of them except (israfiopfyovadcu are 
contained in the Old Testament, and 
besides they are so far congenial to 
religious discourse generally that the 
apostle might reasonably be expected 
to employ them or closely resembling 
terms. For the use of (i6?a(iop<povadou 
the occasion was not quite so obvious, 
though it is perfectly conceivable that 
the apostolic thinker, having in mind 
the reaching of a supernatural goal 
through supernatural means, might 
naturally have had recourse to the 
term. An acquaintance with the Mys- 
teries could doubtless have introduced 
him to it, though not fully in his 
sense. "In the Mystery Religions the 



chief stress is laid upon a quasi-mag- 
ical 



ical transmutation of essence. The 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 87 

nature of Paul's conception of the 
nvev^ia sets in the foreground the 
moral significance of the process." 10 

In connection with xvptog (Lord) the 
claim is made that its application to 
Jesus could not have been initiated 
on the basis of Old Testament prece- 
dent or Old Testament training, since 
in that sphere the monotheistic point 
of view stood in the way of admitting 
the ascription of lordship to any other 
than Jehovah; that the title was cur- 
rent in the Mysteries as the designa- 
tion of the divinity who was acknowl- 
edged as the head of the mystic 
community; that consequently it was 
taken from this quarter and installed 
in its Christian use by the election of 
Paul or by his acquiescence in the 
choice of his Gentile converts. 11 The 
claim seems plausible. There are some 
considerations, however, which may 

10 Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, p. 183. 

11 See in particular Bousset, Geschichte des Christusglaubens 
von den Angfangen des Christentums bis Irenaeus. 



v- 



88 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

serve to qualify the occasion to stress 
the dominating influence of the Mys- 
teries in the matter. Even in the 
Old Testament a suggestion is given of 
one who stands as Lord (xvptog in the 
Septuagint) alongside of the Lord 
Jehovah (Psa. ex. 1); and the text 
bearing this suggestion was given a 
certain prominence through it§ cita- 
tion by Jesus in his encounter with the 
Pharisees (Matt. xxii. 45; Luke xx. 44). 
Furthermore the antecedent thought 
of the Messiah in at least a portion 
of the Jewish domain, as affirming of 
him a distinctly superhuman rank, 12 
was adapted to supplement the sugges- 
tion furnished by the psalmist's words, 
and to point to the Messiah as a fit 
subject for the name of xvpeog. An 
appreciable Jewish basis was thus 
supplied for applying this name to the 
transcendent person whom the prim- 



12 Book of Enoch, chapters xxxvii-lxxi; Fourth Book of Ezra, 
vii, xiii, xiv. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 89 

itive Christian faith acknowledged as 
the Messiah. In harmony with the 
supposition that this Judaic ground 
was influential is the fact of the early 
currency among the Christians of the 
Aramaic phrase maranatha, "the Lord 
cometh." 13 It is not to be overlooked 
also that in the Grseco-Roman world of 
Paul's day the title xvpiog had other 
associations than those given it in 
connection with the Mysteries. By 
the time the apostle began to pen his 
epistles, the custom, which was pro- 
nounced from the age of Domitian, was 
in all probability under way, the cus- 
tom namely of dignifying the em- 
peror with the title of xvpiog. Is it 
to be supposed that this use of the 
title would have recommended it to 
Paul or to any other contemporary 
Christian? Our conviction is that it 
must have acted as the very opposite 

13 Compare E. F. Scott, The Beginnings of the Church, pp. 
95-108; J. H. Ropes, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on 
the Epistle of St. James, p. 34. 



90 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

of a recommendation. No less is it 
our conviction that the employment 
of the title in the Mysteries must have 
served as the reverse of a motive 
for its adoption. Some of Paul's 
converts may have heard it in that 
connection; but what we know of the 
apostle's attitude toward contemporary 
Gentilism leads us to suppose that he 
advised those who took Christ as their 
Master to clear their minds completely 
of all the fancies and fables of their 
old faith. They were instructed to rate 
these as a bygone and to account 
themselves new creatures in Christ 
Jesus. If the apostle took over from 
them a title which had functioned in 
their old paganism, it was not in any 
degree because it had so functioned. 
It was, rather, because he, and with 
him contemporary Christians, had a 
conception of Christ which that title 
matched better than any other in the 
available vocabulary. It at once gave 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 91 

expression to the transcendent dignity 
and authority which they wished to 
ascribe to Christ, and was in harmony 
with their intention to conserve a cer- 
tain preeminence to the Father. Ante- 
cedent Gentile usage did not give them 
the motive for adopting the title; 
rather their ruling conception of Christ 
constrained them to adopt the title 
in spite of its association with crude 
imperial gods or fabled divinities. 

In point of theory we freely admit 
the probability that Paul's religious 
vocabulary was influenced by his Hel- 
lenic environment, and more specific- 
ally by the Mystery Religions in so 
far as they were a conspicuous factor 
in that environment. But other ante- 
cedents were influential with the apos- 
tle, and there are abundant reasons 
for caution against attributing too 
great a role to the special factor. A 
very exaggerated impression may be 
formed, as to the degree in which the 



92 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Mystery Religions impinged upon the 
mind of Paul, by scouring the Grseco- 
Roman world and gathering up, 
through a period of several centuries, 
all the phrases having a semblance 
of Pauline usage. Such a compacting 
process easily lends itself to an over- 
grown impression. It is our convic- 
tion that the Mystery Religions did 
not bulk so large in the apostle's con- 
templation as some scholars have im- 
agined. Indeed, there is room for 
the suspicion that in respect of theii 
relative prevalence and influence in 
the antique world generally recent 
judgment has been inclined to an 
overestimate; certainly the limited ex- 
tent to which they figure in patristic 
literature does not testify to a very vital 
conception of their importance. We 
do not say that the patristic measure 
was the true one, but simply raise 
the question whether somewhat of a 
tendency to an overdrawn estimate 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 93 

may not have gained currency in 
recent scholarship. Doubtless the fu- 
t sion of Greek and Oriental constituents, 
following the conquests of Alexander, 
marked an important era in the his- 
tory of religion. But it is quite possi- 
ble to take too little account of the 
compromising features which limited 
the acceptability of any specific product 
of the fusion in the sphere both of 
Hellenic culture and of Jewish re- 
ligious training. 

It has been indicated that the 
measure of PauPs indebtedness to the 
Mystery Religions for his terms is by 
no means a certain index of his obli- 
gations for characteristic ideas. He 
might very well have been too rich 
in ideas to need to borrow at all, 
while yet he was measurably dependent 
for the terms in which he might give 
the ideas appropriate and effective 
expression. 



04 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Two things invite to skepticism in 
relation to the supposition that Paul 
owed any appreciable debt to the 
Mystery Religions as respects his 
fundamental ideas. In the first place, 
the sphere of Christian truth stood 
for him as the sphere of light and 
reality over against the darkness, fool- 
ishness, and vanity of Gentile re- 
ligion. Emphatic declarations in his 
epistles make it evident that he never 
could have dreamed of going into 
the latter domain for any part of 
his theological furnishing. 14 The sup- 
position of conscious recourse to that 
province is simply preposterous. 

In the second place, whatever re- 
semblances can be traced between 
Paul's characteristic ideas and various 
phases in the scheme of the Mysteries, 
they differ in fact so widely that 
ample proof is given that he did not 



i* Rom. 1. 21ff., iii. 1, 2; 1 Cor. i. 21, iii. 19; Gal. iv. 8, 9; Eph. 
v. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 5. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 95 

either consciously or unconsciously take 
over into his own system any ruling 
conceptions from the latter. Much of 
what was said in the preceding chap- 
ter on similarities and contrasts is 
pertinent here. The similarities of 
Pauline representations to those of 
the Mystery cults are explicable apart 
from any supposition of borrowing, 
and they are accompanied by very 
pronounced contrasts. The given cults, 
it is admitted, made much of a future 
and immortal life. But how could 
Paul, as a believer in the Jesus who 
taught the doctrine of a vital immor- 
tality and who rose from the dead, 
fail to magnify this theme? Jesus gave 
the incomparable credential of im- 
mortality in his warmly colored and 
penetrating exposition of the Father- 
hood of God and his ideal illustration 
of the filial relation to him. Life and 
immortality were brought to light in 
him by the very type of religious 



96 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

consciousness which he manifested and 
with which he inspired his followers. 
Paul was true to a dominant note in 
his Master's teaching when he spoke 
of the inward attestation of sonship 
toward God, and argued, "If children, 
then heirs, heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ." With this 
point of view, intrinsic to the Gospel, 
in his possession, what need had he 
to kindle the torch of his faith at 
the lesser flame of the Mysteries? 
Their dramatic expedients for working 
up the hope of a blessed hereafter 
were paltry and inefficacious compared 
with the grounds of confidence laid 
for him in the vital message and 
triumphant experiences of Him on 
whom he believed. 

A second point of resemblance is 
admitted. The Mystery Religions gave 
considerable scope to the idea of an 
intimate relation between the initiate 
and the divinity in whose name the 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 97 

mystic rites were celebrated. But 
what need had Paul to draw on them 
for a lively conception of the privilege 
of personal communion with his Lord? 
His individual experiences were in- 
finitely more potent than any sug- 
gestions which could come from that 
quarter. As often as he thought of 
the way in which he had been met 
on the Damascus road he was over- 
whelmed with a sense of the un- 
merited grace which had been visited 
upon himself. That transforming rev- 
elation constituted the initial event 
in a chain of experiences which mag- 
nified the love of God in Christ and 
brought his soul into complete cap- 
tivity. He felt that living or dying 
he was the Lord's and could entertain 
no other purpose but the fulfillment 
of his perfect will. Out of this type 
of personal realization he sketched the 
believer's relation to Christ. The no- 
tion that he needed to go to the 



98 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Mysteries for any part of the ideal 
is nothing less than grotesque. 

Over against these points of 
similarity, and any others that might 
be mentioned, fundamental contrasts 
come into the account. Reference 
has been made to the naturalistic 
basis in the Mystery Religions and 
to the overplus of magic which they 
harbored. On the score of these fea- 
tures it is impossible to bring them 
into line with the Pauline theory of 
redemption. What ground of com- 
parison is there between the Mystery 
scheme, with its gods who personify 
in their death and return to life the 
vicissitudes of vegetable and animal 
life, and the divine economy for re- 
covering sinners which Paul pictures 
as the harmonious combination of 
righteousness and grace? Nothing 
comparable to Paul's argument in the 
third chapter of the epistle to the 
Romans is to be found in the Mys- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 99 

teries. Nothing on the plane of the 
moral fellowship which he postulated 
between the believer and the Crucified 
One is discoverable in their melo- 
dramatic expedients. The cross as he 
understood it, with its profound moral 
significance both for God and for man, 
has no counterpart there. Anyone 
who can discover in their bizarre and 
variegated mythology an equivalent 
for the Pauline doctrine of redemp- 
tion must be gifted with peculiar 
eyesight. Paul manifestly discov- 
ered nothing of the sort. His declara- 
tion that the message of redemption 
preached by himself was foolishness to 
the Gentiles (1 Cor. i. 23) is a de- 
cisive evidence that he was not aware 
that Greek, or Grseco-Oriental, theory 
had in any wise prepared the way 
for the Christian doctrine of salva- 
tion through Christ. 15 

36 Compare Burton S. Easton, The Pauline Theology and Hel- 
lenism in The American Journal of Theology, July, 1917, pp 
373-376. 



100 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 



CHAPTER V 

THE QUESTION OF PAUL'S IN- 
DEBTEDNESS TO THE MYS- 
TERY RELIGIONS FOR HIS 
CONCEPTIONS OF BAPTISM 
AND THE EUCHARIST 

A writer on New Testament 
themes has expressed the opinion that 
the high sacramental theory of bap- 
tism and the eucharist, the theory 
that these rites work ex opere operate* 
(or in the simple virtue of their ritual 
performances), 1 was held by Paul, and 
was central in the Primitive Chris- 
tianity to which the Roman empire 
began to be converted. 2 



1 Roman Catholic usage, which gave currency to the phrase 
ex opere operate, clearly assigns it this sense. For the main evi- 
dences, the author's Sacerdotalism in the Nineteenth Century, 
pp. 222-224, may be consulted. 

* K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 213-215, 385-390. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 101 

In dissenting from this opinion we 
may claim at the outset that it is 
not enforced by any compelling ver- 
dict of scholarship. The writer who 
penned it thinks, indeed, that such 
a verdict will soon be installed, but 
he admits "that many critics of the 
highest standing among Protestant 
theologians would deny the sound- 
ness of the views enunciated, and 
maintain that primitive Christianity 
was not centrally sacramental." He 
might have added that these critics 
by no means wear a common badge 
as respects affiliation with conserva- 
tism or radicalism, but belong to di- 
verse schools. We choose to believe 
that their judgment will not so readily 
give way as the writer supposes before 
the discovery that high sacramental 
views were current, to some extent, 
in contemporary Gentilism. Proof that 
such views were present in the field 
where primitive Christianity wrought 



102 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

obviously falls very far short of a 
demonstration that they were appro- 
priated and given a central place in 
primitive Christianity. 

In respect of baptism, it is to be 
noticed, in the first place, that neither 
Paul nor any other New Testament 
writer has expressed the conviction 
that it works regeneration or any 
other spiritual benefit in purely passive 
subjects. The pronounced token of 
high sacramentalism, which emerged 
subsequently in the theory of bap- 
tism as applied to infant subjects, 
nowhere appears in the apostolic 
literature, that literature making no 
reference at least of a direct and 
unequivocal character, to infant bap- 
tism. No appeal can be made to 
this topic for convicting Paul of hold- 
ing the magical or ex opere operato 
theory of the sacrament. Possibly it 
may be thought that in his reference 
to baptism for the dead (1 Cor. xv. 29) 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 103 

the apostle has evinced a belief in 
the efficacy of the rite for purely passive 
subjects. But that is no warrantable 
conclusion. If Paul, for argumentative 
effect, assumed the standpoint of the 
objectors whom he wished to con- 
vince—a thing most probable, as will 
be seen shortly — then he is not placed 
on record as believing that baptism 
for the dead has any efficacy whatever. 
In any case it is not in evidence that 
he believed that the dead can be 
benefited unconditionally by baptism 
performed upon the living in their 
behalf. Nothing, therefore, in the 
extant records justifies the assumption 
that he considered the rite efficacious 
for purely passive subjects. 

Coming to more positive grounds of 
inference, we are permitted to affirm 
that the ascription of the high sacra- 
mental conception of baptism to Paul 
is incongruous with declarations in 
which he positively disparages the 



104 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

ceremonial point of view. Nothing 
less than this disparagement is in- 
volved in the style of his references 
to circumcision. He depreciates this 
rite, not on the ground that it has 
been superseded by a more efficacious 
rite, but on the ground that it be- 
longs to an external range and bears 
no comparison in respect of religious 
value with interior or spiritual states 
or transactions. This is plainly the 
import of such sentences as the fol- 
lowing: "He is not a Jew which is 
one outwardly; neither is that cir- 
cumcision, which is outward in the 
flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one 
inwardly; and circumcision is that of 
the heart, in the spirit, not in the 
letter; whose praise is not of men, 
but of God." "Circumcision is noth- 
ing, and uncircumcision is nothing; 
but the keeping of the command- 
ments of God." "In Christ Jesus 
neither circumcision availeth anything, 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 105 

nor uncircumcision, but faith working 
through love. . . . Neither is circum- 
cision anything, nor uncircumcision, 
but a new creature." 3 The common 
characteristic of these passages is the 
antipathy which they reveal to rating 
the external and ceremonial on any- 
thing like a parity with the interior 
and spiritual. If the apostle who 
penned them conceived of baptism as 
profoundly efficacious in its own virtue 
as a ritual transaction, he must have 
been an adept in self-contradiction. 
And these passages do not stand alone, 
but are in line with an ample series 
of instructions which powerfully stress 
the incomparable and unqualified ne- 
cessity of those interior dispositions 
which came to manifestation in Christ. 
It is certainly not the voice of the 
ceremonialist that we hear in words 
like these: "If any man hath not the 
spirit of Christ, he is none of his. . . . 

3 Rom. ii. 28, 29; 1 Cor. vii. 19; Gal. v. 6, vi. 15. 



106 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

As many as are led by the Spirit of 
God, these are the sons of God." 4 
"If I bestow all my goods to feed 
the poor, and if I give my body to 
be burned, but have not love, it 
profiteth me nothing." "I have been 
crucified with Christ; yet I live; and 
yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in 
me; and that life which I now live in 
the flesh I live in faith, the faith which 
is in the Son of God, who loved me, 
and gave himself up for me." 5 Quite 
in harmony with this supreme stress 
on an interior life realized through 
heart appropriation of the gospel mes- 
sage is the apostle's characterization 
of his vocation. "Christ sent me," 
he says, "not to baptize, but to 
preach the gospel" (1 Cor. i. 17). 
Had he attached to baptism the virtue 
which is ascribed to it in the high 
sacramental theory, he would nat- 



* Rom. viii. 9, 14; 1 Cor. xiii. 3. 
e Gal. ii. 20. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 107 

urally have had very little inclination 
to mention what must have seemed 
a strange and injurious limitation of 
his calling. 

The standpoint of Paul, as involving 
a limited efficacy of baptism, is indi- 
cated very distinctly by the over- 
whelming emphasis which he places 
upon faith as the condition of justi- 
fication. It is a foremost thesis with 
him that justification is attained by 
faith. 6 "The gospel," he declares, "is 
the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that belie veth. . . . For 
therein is revealed a righteousness of 
God by faith unto faith: as it is written, 
But the righteous shall five by faith." 
"With the heart man belie veth unto 
righteousness." The Spirit is received 
by "the hearing of faith," and it is 
by the instrumentality of faith that 
Christ is made to dwell in the heart. 7 



«Rom. iii. 21, 22, 28, iv. 3, 5, v. 1, ix. 30, 32; Gal. iii. 11, 24; 
Eph. ii. 8. 

7 Rom. i. 16, 17, x. 10; Gal. iii. 2; Eph. iii. 17. 



108 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

Now, for one who makes so much of 
the primacy and necessity of faith in 
the appropriation of salvation, what 
in plain logic can be the office of bap- 
tism? Is it conceivable that it can 
be regarded as having any virtue 
whatever independently of antecedent 
and accompanying faith? Can it pos- 
sibly be accounted anything more than 
a fitting accessory to faith as giving 
to it open manifestation and attesting 
the wish and the will of its subject 
to be numbered with Christian be- 
lievers? These questions, we are con- 
fident, must be answered in the 
negative. Either Paul was glaringly 
illogical, or he must have rated bap- 
tism as distinctly secondary to such 
a spiritual condition as faith, and 
must have regarded it as totally desti- 
tute of saving efficacy in the absence 
of that indispensable condition. That 
it is not necessary to choose the 
former alternative will appear from a 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 109 

glance at the few references to baptism 
which occur in the Pauline Epistles. , 
It is noticeable that in the great 
dogmatic epistle to the Romans the 
subject of baptism is broached in but 
a single instance, and that in this 
instance the motive for its introduc- 
tion is homiletical rather than dog- 
matic. The passage reads, "Shall we 
continue in sin that grace may abound? 
God forbid! We who died to sin, 
how shall we any longer live therein? 
Or are ye ignorant that all ye who 
were baptized into Christ Jesus were 
baptized into his death? We were 
buried therefore with him through 
baptism into death. . . . Even so reckon 
ye also yourselves to be dead unto 
sin, but alive unto God in Christ 
Jesus" (Rom. vi. 1-4, 11). The mo- 
tive underlying the passage, as we 
have said, is plainly homiletical. Paul 
wishes to give his readers a vivid 
impression of the inconsistency into 



110 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

which they would fall if they should 
make light of sin after undergoing 
the rite in which purification from sin, 
or death to sin, was figured. Not 
what baptism in its own virtue effected, 
but what it was understood to repre- 
sent or symbolize, was the pertinent 
point of view. At least, it is perfectly 
gratuitous to attach any larger sense 
to the passage. The Epistle to the 
Romans affords no proper ground for 
charging that the apostle ran into 
radical self-contradiction by assuming 
an outward ceremony intrinsically effi- 
cacious or working ex opere operato. 

It has been observed by one or 
another reviewer that Paul's repre- 
sentation of burial with Christ in 
baptism has a certain analogy to the 
assumption in the Mystery Religions 
that the initiate, in the performance 
of the ritual, in some sort repeats the 
experience of the god who is being 
commemorated. The analogy is not 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 111 

to be denied. But that Paul derived 
from his knowledge of the Mysteries 
an incentive to the symbolism in 
question strikes us as problematical. 
A mind so alert as that of the apostle, 
and so dominated with the thought 
and feeling of mystical union with 
Christ, might easily have gravitated, 
without exterior impulsion, into the 
employment of the given baptismal 
figure. In any event, there is the 
scantiest sort of occasion to imagine 
ohat he took over a notion of cere- 
monial efficacy that is glaringly con- 
tradictory to his explicit teachings. 

If the context of the statement 
relative to baptism in the Epistle to 
the Romans negatives the demand for 
a high sacramental theory, the same 
is true of the text in Galatians. We 
read here: "Ye are all sons of God, 
through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as 
many of you as were baptized into 
Christ did put on Christ" (iii. 26, 27). 



112 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

The first of these sentences makes 
faith the condition of sonship, and 
thus assigns to it the primacy which 
it has customarily in the apostle's 
discourse. Is it to be supposed that 
this function of faith is ignored in 
the following sentence, and that bap- 
tism, as a mere sacramental per- 
formance, is counted efficacious for the 
putting on of Christ? Let any one, 
who can, believe the apostle guilty 
of such a foolish collocation of con- 
tradictory statements. The gist of 
his discourse is clear enough. He 
makes the legal dispensation and the 
dispensation of grace in Christ anti- 
thetic, the one being associated with 
servitude and the other with freedom. 
He reminds the Galatians that they 
are no longer in the estate of servitude, 
but through faith in Christ have be- 
come sons of God. To clinch this 
point of view he reminds them of 
their public act in receiving baptism, 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 113 

as being an acknowledgment that 
they belonged to the Christ who stood 
for the dispensation of grace and 
freedom, and so could not consistently 
locate themselves under the old legal 
dispensation. The point of emphasis 
is not what baptism in its own virtue 
accomplishes, but the relation of union 
with Christ which baptism, where the 
requisite spiritual conditions are ful- 
filled, attests. 

Such general references to baptism 
as are contained in 1 Cor. vi. 11, 
Col. ii. 12, and Eph. v. 26 leave room 
for the limitations upon the efficacy 
of baptism which are logically implied 
in the fundamental teachings of Paul. 
Relative to the Ephesian text Kennedy 
remarks: "The notion of a baptism of 
the ixx^yjala is plainly metaphorical. 
The most notable feature in the pas- 
sage is the phrase h popart, which no 
doubt must be interpreted, as in 
Romans x. 8, 17, of the proclamation 



114 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

of the gospel. This accords with the 
place given to faith in the other pas- 
sages on baptism which we have 
examined." 8 

The peculiar remark on baptism 
for the dead, 1 Cor. xv. 29, remains 
to be considered. Here the comments 
of Meyer cover so well the essential 
points that we cannot do better than 
to reproduce his principal statements. 
"That a baptism of such a kind effected 
anything," he says, "was assuredly a 
thought foreign to the apostle. He 
wished to point out the subjective 
absurdity of the procedure in the case 
assumed. . . . The custom propagated 
and maintained itself afterward only 
among heretical sects, in particular 
among the Cerinthians and among 
the Marcionites. . . . The usual objec- 
tion, that Paul could not have em- 
ployed for his purpose at all, or at 



8 St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, p. 252. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 115 

least not without adding some censure, 
such an abuse founded on the belief 
in a magical power of baptism, is not 
conclusive, for Paul may be arguing 
ex concesso, and hence may allow the 
relation of the matter to evangelical 
faith to remain undetermined in the 
meantime, seeing that it does not 
belong to the proper subject of his 
present discourse. The abuse must 
afterward have been condemned by 
apostolic teachers (hence it maintained 
itself only among heretics), and no 
doubt Paul too aided in the work of 
its removal." 9 Of course no direct 
proof exists that Paul disapproved of 
baptism for the dead. But the indirect 
evidence has no little cogency. The 
absence of any trace of the custom 
in Catholic Christendom in post- 
apostolic times speaks decidedly for 
the conclusion that it could not have 



9 Critical and Exegetical Handbook on the Epistles to the 
Corinthians, pp. 364, 365. 



116 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

enjoyed the sanction of the apostle who 
surpassed all others in the extent of 
his field of labor. If we conjoin with 
this consideration the anti-ceremonial 
trend of a great part of PauTs teaching, 
the reasonable inference is that the 
Corinthian text is to be construed as 
rather shrewdly employed to confound 
opponents than as representative of 
the apostle's own belief. 10 

In arguing against the indictment 
of the apostle as a propagator of 
the high sacramental theory of bap- 
tism, it is not our intention to claim 
that it had precisely the same sig- 
nificance for him which it has for the 
great body of Protestant believers un- 
der the usual conditions in modern 



10 Compare Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish 
Sources, p. 219. The above exposition proceeds on the supposition 
that proxy baptism is referred to in 1 Cor. xv. 29. It is perhaps 
incumbent on us to notice that this interpretation is not universally 
accepted. Robertson and Plummer, for instance, suggest that 
persons who were persuaded to accept baptism out of affection 
for friends who had died as Christians might reasonably be desig- 
nated as "those who receive baptism in behalf of the dead" (Inter- 
national Critical Commentary). 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 117 

times. In the apostolic era baptism 
marked a great crisis in the life of 
the convert. It often, if not, indeed, 
customarily, followed closely upon the 
exercise of faith in Christ. It thus 
had a vital importance as a completing 
act in the appropriation of Christian- 
ity. It stamped the convert as an 
initiate into a new world, and doubt- 
less was frequently attended by an 
increment of the new life. Under such 
conditions it was naturally given a 
somewhat closer association with the 
positive beginning of the Christian 
life than obtains in case of subjects 
who have grown up in Christian com- 
munities. That PauPs estimate of 
baptism was in some degree affected 
by the special conditions it is not at 
all necessary to deny. What is to be 
denied is that he estimated baptism 
after the mode of a pronounced sacra- 
mentalism, attaching to it an inde- 
pendent virtue, or regarding it as 



118 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

working the renewal of its subjects 
ex opere operato. 

Paul refers directly to the eucharist 
in only two passages — 1 Cor. x. 16-21, 
xi. 20-34. An indirect reference has 
been supposed by some to be con- 
tained in 1 Cor. x. 3, 4. In the first 
mentioned passage he styles the cup 
which is blessed a communion of the 
blood of Christ, and the bread which 
is broken a communion of the body 
of Christ, and reprobates the notion 
that it is permissible for Christians 
who share in this order of communion 
to enter into communion with pagan 
altars and divinities by knowingly 
eating of things which have been offered 
to idols. In the second of the pas- 
sages mentioned he rebukes certain 
disorders which had invaded the sa- 
cred feast as observed by the Cor- 
inthians, repeats the words ascribed 
to Jesus in connection with the Last 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 119 

Supper, emphasizes the memorial char- 
acter of the eucharistic rite as showing 
forth the Lord's death till he comes, 
and warns against sacrilege by declar- 
ing, " whosoever shall eat the bread 
or drink the cup unworthily shall be 
guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lord." In the remaining passage ref- 
erence is made to the experience of 
Israel in the wilderness, where as par- 
takers of the manna they all did eat 
the same spiritual meat, and as re- 
freshed by the water gushing from the 
rock they drank of the same spiritual 
drink, the rock which followed them 
being Christ. In these three passages 
is contained all the evidence which 
can be adduced from the writings of 
Paul in an attempt to convict him 
of borrowing from the Mystery Re- 
ligions the conception of a real eating 
of the body and a real drinking of 
the blood of Christ. 
Against the supposition of such bor- 



120 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

rowing it can be urged, in the first 
place, that there are legitimate grounds 
of doubt as to the presence in the 
contemporary Mysteries of that which 
is supposed to have been borrowed. 
Accounts of sacramental meals as 
parts of the mystic program are con- 
fessedly very scanty. 11 According to 
Farnell there is no sign that the 
initiated at Eleusis believed that they 
were partaking through food of the 
divine substance of their divinity, and 
though this conception appears else- 
where sporadically in ancient ritual, 
"it is by no means so frequent that 
we could assume it in any given case 
without evidence." 12 "The alleged 
instances/ ' says Moffatt, "of wor- 
shipers in the cults sharing in the 
life of the deity by partaking of him 
in a meal are distant, late, and du- 



u Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 102fif.; Reitrenstein, Die 
Hellenistische Mysterienreligionen. 
12 The Cults of the Greek States, III, 196. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 121 

bious." 13 Carl Clemen remarks that 
we hear of sacred meals in the most 
varied Mysteries, but have no in- 
formation about the partaking in them 
of the divinity. 14 Percy Gardner re- 
pudiates the supposition that Paul 
can properly be placed on a level with 
those who have held to the notion of 
a real eating of the divinity, and adds, 
"In fact, in his time we cannot trace 
in any of the more respectable forms 
of heathen religion a survival of the 
practice of eating the deity. 15 It 
would seem, then, that a main premise 
is wanting for the establishment of 
the conclusion that Paul took over 
from the Mystery Religions a thor- 
oughly realistic view and applied it 
to the eucharistic feast. Distinct proof 
fails to appear that this view was at 
hand, at least in such form and 



» The Expositor, July, 1913. 

u Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das alttste Christen- 
tum, p. 55. 

16 The Religious Experience of St. Paul, p. 121. 



122 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

connection as would have been] 
likely to exercise any attraction upon 
the mind of the apostle. That he 
should have been favorably impressed 
by a Dionysiac orgy — supposing such 
a rite to have been in vogue in his 
neighborhood — is not conceivable. 16 

In the second place, as was illus- 
trated at some length in connection 
with the topic of baptism, the pre- 
dominant emphasis which Paul placed 
upon the spiritual conditions of re- 
ligious benefits and attainments makes 
it incredible Jhat he could have held 
the alleged realistic view of the euchar- 
ist. He who spoke of Christ as dwell- 
ing in the heart by faith, who declared 
that any eating which is not of faith 



16 In the cult of Osiris some sort of recognition may have been 
given to a partaking of the god (A. Moret, Kings and Gods of 
Egypt, pp. 97, 98). But it is difficult to conceive that instructed 
Egyptians could have understood in a literal sense the vague 
reference to this function in their highly symbolical ritual. As 
for those within the pale of Christian teaching, it is not credible 
that they would be inclined to award any favorable attention to 
a reference of this kind in a cult which they could but regard as 
based in extravagant allegory, magic, and mythology. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 123 

works condemnation, who affirmed that 
the kingdom of God is not eating and 
drinking, but righteousness and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost, who made 
bold to say that flesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God — 
is it to be supposed that this man 
thought that Christ could be savingly 
appropriated by the mere physical 
act of eating and drinking physical 
elements? Well may any sober-minded 
person hesitate to charge the apostle 
with such superficiality and self-con- 
tradiction. 

In the third place, it is to be no- 
ticed that no one of the three 
passages mentioned contains a com- 
pelling ground for imputing to Paul 
the crass realistic view of the euchar- 
ist. There is very slight occasion to 
take the words of 1 Cor. x. 3, 4 in a 
realistic sense, scarcely more occasion 
to do so than to conclude that those 
who are spoken of by the psalmist as 



124 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

being shepherded and made to lie 
down in green pastures must be con- 
strued as literal sheep which divided 
their time between cropping grass and 
reclining on the ground. As a Jew, or 
simply as a member of the human 
race, Paul was not necessarily an utter 
stranger to metaphorical and para- 
bolic speech. It is quite gratuitous, 
if not worse, to suppose that he meant 
to identify Christ with the manna 
or the rock. The manna and the 
water gushing from the rock were 
spiritual meat and drink to the Israel- 
ites — to those who were sufficiently 
responsive to their import — as attest- 
ing the grace and compassion of God 
whereof Christ may be conceived as 
the medium or channel. That they 
were unconditionally spiritual meat 
and drink is not said; rather the con- 
trary is intimated by the sequel, for 
most of the participants fell under the 
displeasure of God and were over- 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 125 

thrown in the wilderness. There is 
no disclosure here of a sacrament 
which works ex opere operato. 

The point of emphasis in 1 Cor. x. 
16-21 lies in the communion (xoivovia) 
on the one hand with the body and 
blood of Christ, and on the other 
with the demons (or gods) who pre- 
side over the sacrificial feasts of the 
heathen. A suggestion that a moral 
element or matter of personal attitude 
enters into the specified communion 
is indicated by the apostle's dealing 
with it in its heathen connections. He 
does not assume that the mere eating 
of meat offered to heathen gods or 
demons involves communion with 
them. Christians may eat without 
scruple whatever is sold in the sham- 
bles, asking no question about its 
antecedents. Communion with de- 
mons ensues only where the meat 
is distinctly recognized as affiliated 
with the demons by previous con- 



126 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

secration. Eating in that case is 
derelict as making one, on the score 
of his consent, a table companion of 
demons. As Reville remarks: "The 
apostle here appeals to the religious 
idea which inspired the sacred meals 
of the Greeks, communion with the 
gods by the absorption of a common 
food, belonging to the gods by the 
fact of consecration. The xouvovla 
r£>v Saifiovicdv does not mean the ab- 
sorption of the flesh of the demons 
any more than the xocvcdvla tov Svcl- 
aatyjplov means the absorption of the 
altar. ... In the one and the other 
alternative there is involved the sol- 
idarity attested by the religious meal, 
on the one hand with the demons, 
on the other with the body and 
blood of Christ." 17 Paul views the 
solidarity or communion with the de- 
mons, which is realized in the religious 
meal, as ethically conditioned in the 

17 Cited by Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, p. 273. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 127 

case of professing Christians. It is 
quite in order to suppose that he 
regarded communion with the body 
or the blood of Christ — in other words, 
with the Christ whose body was broken 
and whose blood was shed 18 — as also 
ethically conditioned. In fact, he ex- 
plicitly indicates further on in the 
epistle that this was his point of view, 
in that he speaks of those who, in 
their careless lack of consideration for 
what the consecrated elements stand, 
eat and drink judgment unto them- 
selves. What we have, then, in the 
passage on "communion" is the thought 
of an ethically conditioned fellowship 
or solidarity with the crucified Saviour 
through the medium of a sacred feast. 
No literal eating of the Christ, no 



18 The propriety of this rendering is suggested by a phase of the 
passage. If by communion with the altar is to be understood 
communion with the God who is represented by the altar, then by 
communion with the body and blood of Christ we may under- 
stand communion with the suffering and dying Christ. That in 
both instances the sacred person was regarded as the real object 
of communion cannot well be doubted. 



128 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

sacrament working ex opere operato y 
needs to be supposed. 

So readily does the remaining pas- 
sage (1 Cor. xi. 20-34) lend itself to 
a symbolical interpretation, that it 
verily has the appearance of a tour 
de force to read into it any crass 
realism. What is eaten in the euchar- 
istic feast is spoken of, not as the 
body of Christ, but as bread. A 
memorial function is ascribed to the 
eating: it proclaims the Lord's death 
till he comes. Furthermore, as noted 
above, the benefit of partaking of the 
elements is conditioned on the appro- 
priate religious attitude. It is said, 
to be sure, that the one who eats 
and drinks unworthily makes himself 
guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lord. But these words are entirely 
pertinent in connection with the sym- 
bolical interpretation. He who treats 
despitefully the symbol pours contempt 
on the things symbolized, just as one 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 129 

who tramples on his country's flag 
vents despite upon his country. 

PauPs conception of the eucharist 
was doubtless not of that type which 
is likely to be taken by a prosaic 
mind, but, rather, such as is congenial 
to an intense poetic soul. He had a 
most vivid impression of the reality 
of Christ and of his intimate presence 
in every Christian function normally 
fulfilled. He would have been in 
pronounced contradiction with him- 
self had he not thought of the Master 
as being effectively present with ear- 
nest and faith-inspired disciples in the 
solemn commemoration of his passion. 
Herein he shows a certain kinship with 
a view of the eucharist which had 
much currency among the Greek Fa- 
thers, the view namely that Christ 
in his spiritual nature, or as the Logos, 
comes into a relation with the con- 
secrated elements analogous to that 
assumed to the body appropriated in 



130 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

his incarnation, thereby imparting to 
them a special efficacy. 19 The Pauline 
view of the effective spiritual presence 
of Christ in the eucharist has, we say, 
a degree of kinship with the given 
patristic conception. But the kinship 
is still at a notable remove from 
identity* What Paul emphasized was 
not a special relation of Christ to the 
consecrated elements, but the ethically 
conditioned presence of Christ to the 
believing recipient of those elements. 

19 Gieseler, Dogmengeschichte, p. 411; Schweitzer, Paul and His 
Interpreters, pp. 200, 201. Compare A. Lagarde, The Latin 
Church in the Middle Ages, p. 51. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 131 



CHAPTER VI 

THE QUESTION OF THE IN- 
DEBTEDNESS OF THE JOHAN- 
NINE WRITINGS, AND OF 
OTHER PORTIONS OF THE 
NEW TESTAMENT, TO THE 
MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

By the Johannine writings in this 
connection we denote the fourth Gospel 
and the epistles (especially the first) 
bearing the name of John. On the 
authorship of the Apocalypse no pro- 
nouncement is designed. A separate 
treatment is appropriate to it on 
account of its special character. 

Among preliminary considerations 
the Jewish lineage of the author of 
the fourth Gospel and the Johannine 
Epistles is worthy of note. The fact 
that he was of Jewish birth and train- 
ing is commonly admitted. Good 



132 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

evidence appears in the language of 
the Gospel. The construction betrays 
the Hebrew antecedents of the writer. 
The sentences are for the most part 
coordinated, not subordinated. Of gen- 
uine Greek period-building scarcely a 
trace is to be found. 1 The tenor of 
the contents bears witness to like 
antecedents. While the evangelist 
thinks of contemporary Jews as irre- 
concilable opponents of the Christian 
faith, he takes a high view of the 
historic vocation of Judaism. Christ 
is represented as claiming that salva- 
tion is from the Jews, and as coming 
to his own proper possession in his 
advent to the Jews. Much care is 
exhibited to join events in the life 
of Christ with Old Testament texts. 
In fine, the evidence is decisive for the 
Jewish lineage of the evangelist. More- 
over, there are fairly substantial rea- 
sons for supposing him to have been 

1 Wetzel, Die Echtheit des Evangeliums Johannis, p. 36. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 133 

a Palestinian resident. His accurate 
knowledge of Palestinian localities is 
best explained on this ground. It is 
much more likely that he came to 
that knowledge as a resident, favored 
with repeated opportunities for ob- 
servation, than as one who had simply 
made a fugitive tour through the land. 
Now antecedents of this kind have 
something more than an indifferent 
bearing on our theme. We are en- 
titled to suppose in the author of the 
Johannine writings, as substantial bar- 
riers to an appreciative attitude toward 
the Mystery Religions as Jewish de- 
scent and training could furnish. 2 

A second preliminary consideration, 
having distinct pertinency, is the rela- 
tion of the Johannine writings to the 
Pauline. Admittedly the latter were 
influential antecedents of the former. 
However much they may differ in 

2 "I imagine," says Moffatt, "that the author of the fourth Gospel 
would not have failed to sympathize with Philo's passionate 
aversion to all Mystery Religions" (The Expositor, July, 1913). 



134 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

respect of form, their close affinity in 
vital doctrinal points is beyond dis- 
pute. Even the doctrine of the Logos, 
as Professor Bacon rightly claims, 3 is 
already present in all but name, in 
the Pauline Epistles. In so far, then, 
as the points in the writings of Paul, 
which have been supposed to align 
his teachings with the Mystery Re- 
ligions, are substantially reproduced in 
the Johannine writings, sufficient his- 
torical antecedents are assigned them. 
There is no need to discover in them 
the influential working of the pagan 
cults, which undoubtedly their author 
regarded quite as unfavorably as did 
his apostolic predecessor. Now, the 
points of alignment which are capable 
of being specified between the Johan- 
nine writings and the Mystery Re- 
ligions are not appreciably different 
from those which are alleged to per- 
tain to the Pauline writings. It is 

3 The Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate, pp. 5, 6. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 135 

indeed our conviction that not a single 
specific point can be mentioned as 
belonging to the former which is not 
discoverable in the latter. With this 
conclusion it is doubtless possible to 
combine the view that the atmosphere 
of the Johannine writings is more 
pervasively tinged with the Mysteries 
than is that of the Pauline. But a 
verdict to this effect has not been 
brought in by a unanimous jury. 
A dissenting voice may be heard in 
these words of Ramsay: "We cannot 
regard John's Gospel as specially com- 
prehensible to the Gentiles, though 
it was written in Asia for Asiatic 
Hellenes. It is deeply Palestinian in 
its cast of thought and expression; 
and the religious atmosphere in which 
it moves is non-Hellenic to a greater 
degree than the writings of Paul." 4 
The distinguished student of Pauline 
lore may possibly be challenged in 

4 The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day, p. 50. 



136 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

respect of this statement. Firm 
ground, however, remains for the con- 
tention that a substantially full com- 
plement of the ideas supposedly affil- 
iating with the Mysteries, which can 
be discovered in the Johannine writ- 
ings, is discoverable in the Pauline 
Epistles. The Johannine writer could 
have taken them from that quarter 
if he needed to borrow them at all. 
Of course, if Paul took them from 
the Mystery Religions, ultimate obli- 
gation to that source, on the part 
of the Johannine writer, is not dis- 
proved. But it has been our attempt 
in previous chapters to show that 
PauTs obligations were inconsiderable. 
The point of the present paragraph 
is therefore made with entire consis- 
tency. 

In their doctrine of Christ's person 
and saving office the Johannine writings 
may not locate the emphasis just 
where it was placed by Paul; but 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 137 

sufficient antecedents for all the ele- 
ments of the doctrine were furnished 
by the Pauline teaching. That teach- 
ing was an incomparably more fertile 
source of suggestion than the Mystery 
Religions could possibly have been. 
It is an historical illusion which per- 
mits one to suppose that a writer of 
Jewish lineage and training could have 
felt the least motive to draw from 
them. The attitude of the Evangelist 
was not and could not have been any- 
thing like that of the twentieth-cen- 
tury student who enforces himself to 
sympathize with all the varied mani- 
festations of religion. Had he been 
interested to look into any one of 
the contemporary Mysteries, he would 
have seen in it nothing better than a 
heap of fantastic mythological fancies. 
His verdict would have been quite 
as scornful at least as was that which 
the broad-minded Alexandrian Clem- 
ent in his day passed upon the Mystery 



138 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

cults. 5 For the essential trend of 
New Testament Christology and so- 
teriology an adequate source can be 
found entirely apart- from recourse to 
cults so obnoxious to the minds of 
New Testament writers. The powerful 
impression made by the teaching, life, 
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
combined with the ideal pictures in 
the Prophets and the higher view of 
the Messiah in later Judaism, are 
reasonably regarded as sufficient his- 
torical factors, when impinging upon 
such deep and impressionable souls as 
those of the apostle Paul and the 
fourth evangelist, to bring forth the 
Christological and soteriological con- 
tent. The conception of the Logos, as 
developed in Greek philosophy, was 
indeed fitted to serve as an auxiliary 
in respect of formulating Christological 
belief; but the belief itself was not 



6 Address to the Greeks, chap. ii. Compare Minucius Felix, 
Octavius, chap. xxi. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 139 

dependent upon the contributions of 
philosophy. 

The Johannine writings are relatively- 
distinguished by their valuation of 
knowledge. This feature has been 
supposed to be a token of contact 
with the Mystery Religions. In par- 
ticular the rating of the vision of God 
as the culmination of enlightenment 
and the supreme means of trans- 
formation into the divine likeness has 
been emphasized as a mark of inter- 
connection. But closely examined, the 
point of view in the Johannine writings 
is found to be materially different from 
that of the Mysteries. In the former 
knowledge is conceived as ethically 
conditioned in the most thorough 
sense; in the latter the ethical con- 
dition is radically obscured, not to 
say obliterated, by the scope which 
is given to magic. In the former the 
vision of God comes from intimate 
spiritual fellowship with him. Every 



140 THE MYSTEB Y RELIGIONS 

one who hopes for it purifies himself 
even as he is pure. In the latter it 
is pictured as the result of an ecstatic 
uplift which serves as a means of 
momentary divine disclosure. The in- 
ference seems to be well grounded that 
the evangelist was too well instructed 
to take any lesson on this subject 
from the Mystery Religions. He agrees 
doubtless with their underlying sup- 
position that divine revelation is the 
authentic source of knowledge. There 
is no need, however, to imagine that 
he falls in with the supposition be- 
cause it was harbored by them. As 
a Hebrew he was legitimately heir to 
it, and it was an outstanding assump- 
tion with his predecessor, the apostle 
Paul. Possibly the evangelist dis- 
coursed on knowledge somewhat more 
fully than he would otherwise have 
done, owing to the occasion to present 
an offset to the Gnosticism which had 
begun to invade the Christian domain. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 141 

Assuredly, no more effective expedient 
against Gnostic propagandise! could 
have been devised than the Johannine 
procedure, in which knowledge is at 
once honored and set in right relations. 
A representation analogous to the 
Johannine antithesis between the seen 
and temporal on the one hand and 
the unseen and eternal on the other 
undoubtedly had place in the Hellenic 
domain. In that domain, however, 
by far the most prominent and influ- 
ential setting forth of the antithesis 
occurred within the limits of the Pla- 
tonic philosophy. If the fourth Evan- 
gelist must be accounted a debtor for 
this feature in his teaching, there is 
still very slight occasion to regard 
him as a debtor specifically to the 
Mystery Religions. That he was not 
a headlong borrower from any source, 
the Platonic included, is evinced by 
the fact that in the antithesis which 
he depicts no place is given to a meta- 



142 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

physical dualism. He never paints 
the temporal visible world as intrin- 
sically evil. The Christ whom he 
acknowledges truly came in the flesh, 
and he excoriates the rejecter of this 
historic fact as partaking of the spirit 
of antichrist. 

The evidence for the assumption 
that the Johannine theology affiliates 
with the Mystery Religions, as incor- 
porating high sacramental conceptions, 
strikes us as quite inadequate. As 
respects baptism only a single phrase 
can be cited in its behalf, namely, the 
declaration on being born of water 
and the Spirit (iii. 5). And here the 
conjunction of water with the Spirit 
seems to be exegetically designed. It 
serves to explain to Nicodemus the 
character of the new birth as being 
a cleansing. In the following verse the 
agent of the spiritual birth is explicitly 
declared to be the Spirit; and further 
on a complete basis is given for the 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 143 

inference that the working of this 
agent is not tied to a baptismal occa- 
sion, his coming and going being like 
the unaccountable movements of the 
wind. Thus the passage on the new 
birth, taken as a whole, distinctly 
accentuates the primacy of the Spirit's 
agency. Professor Gardner keeps 
within the limits of a very decided 
probability when he says: "The idea 
that baptism by itself could regenerate 
would be to the writer as monstrous 
as the notion of Nicodemus that a 
man must enter again into his mother's 
womb. Here as in all parts of the 
Gospel, it is the Spirit that profiteth." 6 
The connection does not properly 
require any reference to the sayings 
of Christ addressed to the woman 
of Samaria (John iv. 13, 14). In the 
whole texture of those sayings there 

8 The Ephesian Gospel, p. 201. We have not thought it worth 
while to take special notice of the fact that the mention of water 
in John hi. 5 has been judged by some critics to have been no 
part of the original text (Wendt, The Gospel According to St. 
John, p. 120). 



144 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

is no suggestion whatever of a bap- 
tismal washing. The stress is plainly 
on the inward appropriation of grace 
or truth which shall be in the recipient 
as "a well of water springing up unto 
eternal life." Scarcely more in de- 
mand is a reference to the declaration 
that out of the pierced side of Christ 
came both blood and water (xix. 34). 
The evangelist who records not so 
much as a single specific injunction 
of baptism, who represents Christ as 
denying the worth of any fleshly per- 
formance, as assigning life-giving virtue 
to his words, and as repeatedly affirm- 
ing that in believing on him eternal 
life is to be found, in all likelihood did 
not construe the water which he 
associated with the blood as symbolical 
of any external rite. As in the Pauline 
teaching the objective and the sub- 
jective phase of Christ's saving office 
— the virtue of atonement and the 
virtue of a transforming life potency 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 145 

— are most intimately conjoined, so we 
may believe that the Evangelist recog- 
nized the two phases as symbolized 
by the outpoured blood and water. 
By the one was expressed to his mind 
the efficacy of Christ as a propitiation, 
by the other the power of his spiritual 
presence to renovate and refresh the 
inner life. 

The basis for the realistic view of 
the eucharist supposed to be con- 
tained in the sixth chapter of the 
Gospel is purely verbal rather than 
substantial. The chapter itself indi- 
cates clearly enough that the literal 
verbal sense must be transcended. 
In the earlier portion the same results 
are attributed to faith which later 
are ascribed to eating the flesh and 
drinking the blood of Christ. Further- 
more, the eating and drinking are 
spoken of as unconditionally efficacious, 
nothing being said about eating or 
drinking unworthily. This plainly sug- 



146 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

gests that they do not stand for mere 
bodily acts, but are to be construed 
as spiritual functions, or as figurative 
expressions for the believing appro- 
priation of Christ in all the wealth 
of his saving truth. Finally, this 
interpretation is formally enforced in 
the unequivocal proposition, "It is 
the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh 
profiteth nothing: the words that I 
have spoken unto you, are spirit and 
are life." The necessary induction 
could not be more suitably stated 
than in these words of MofTatt: "It 
is consonant with the characteristic 
mysticism of the writer's faith to say, 
that the bread and wine of the Lord's 
Supper must have been for him sym- 
bols, at best, of the presence and 
benefits of Christ." 7 Symbolism of 
this kind was not foreign to Jewish 
literary custom. In the semi-canonical 
book of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom is repre- 

» The Expositor, July, 1913. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 147 

sented as saying: 'They that eat me 
shall yet be hungry; and they that 
drink me shall yet be thirsty" (xxiv. 
21). "Metaphors from eating and 
drinking/ ' says Inge, "are common in 
Talmudic literature, and Philo speaks 
of the Logos as the food of the soul. 
There was, therefore, nothing strange 
or unintelligible in the imagery of the 
[Johannine] discourse. To eat the 
Messiah would be readily understood 
to mean to receive spiritual nourish- 
ment from him, to live by his life." 8 

It may be conceded, or rather, 
affirmed, that the fourth evangelist 
was not indifferent to the sacraments; 
that he, indeed, set a distinct value 
upon them as suitable means of link- 
ing together in the apprehension of men 
the invisible and the visible. What is 
to be denied is the discovery of any 
warrantable ground for the conclusion 



8 Essays on Some Biblical Questions of the Day by Members 
of the University of Cambridge, p. 285. 



148 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

that he imputed to the sacraments 
independent efficacy, the virtue of 
rites which work ex opere operato. 

The similarity of the phraseology of 
the Johannine writings to that of the 
Hermetic literature is strongly em- 
phasized by Reitzenstein, while at the 
same time he admits a notable con- 
trast in spirit and thought. 9 Among 
the terms common to the two classes 
of writings "light" and "life" are 
conspicuous. 10 It is noticeable, how- 
ever, that the Johannine writer has a 
pronounced fondness for broad cate- 
gories and sharp antitheses, an in- 
clination to develop his whole subject- 
matter about a few comprehensive and 
contrasted terms, such as light and 
darkness, life and death, love and 
hatred, sin and righteousness, the 
world and the Christian brotherhood. 
Now, in carrying out this bent it is 



9 Poimandrea, pp. 244, 245. 

i° Ibid., Greek text, I, 9, 12, 17, 21, 32, XIV, 9, 18, 19, pp. 330-347. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 149 

quite conceivable that he should have 
fallen into his peculiar phraseology 
without recourse to exterior models. 
His acquaintance with the Hermetic 
literature remains problematical, and 
the uncertain date of that literature 
makes a still further ground for in- 
decision. 

In any well-rounded dealing with 
the subject full account must be made 
of the respects in which the Johannine 
writings are strongly contrasted with 
the Mystery Religions. It will not 
be necessary, however, to state them 
here in detail, since they are identical 
with the points of contrast already 
specified between the Mystery Re- 
ligions and New Testament Christian- 
ity as a whole. 11 In their advocacy of 
an open system, in their aloofness from 
astrology, sidereal mysticism, and nat- 
uralism in general, in their insistence 
on the ethical as opposed to the 

"See Chapter III. 



150 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

magical, in their avoidance of a pan- 
theistic strain, and in their emphasis 
) on a historical basis, the Johannine 
writings are in a different sphere from 
that of the Mystery Religions. 12 

The author of the book of Rev- 
elation may be credited with using the 
license common to apocalyptists to 
range widely for the symbols appro- 
priate to a thoroughly picturesque 
style of writing. It would cause no 
surprise to find that he had gone 
into the field of ethnic beliefs and 
mythologies for the groundwork of 
some of his representations. Perhaps 
in what he says about the number of 
the "beast," and in his picture of the 
woman pursued by the dragon, we 
have tokens that he derived sugges- 
tions from that quarter. Facts of 
this order, however, give him no 
special association with the Mystery 

12 The points of contrast are well put by E. F. Scott, American 
Journal of Theology, July, 1916. 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 151 

Religions, but only with the general 
store of ethnic mythology. From this 
store, too, he took only things inci- 
dental to his scene-painting. 

In the Old Testament, the Jewish 
Alexandrian theology, and the Pauline 
writings entirely adequate antecedents 
were supplied to the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. There is exceedingly slight 
occasion to connect it with the Mystery 
Religions. The notion of a plurality 
of heavens appears, indeed (iv. 14, 
vii. 26) ; but a mere general expression 
of this notion was something in which 
any Jewish writer of the day might 
have indulged, and is no proof of 
belief in the elaborate cosmological 
scheme of the Mystery cults. The 
apparent reference to conversion as an 
enlightenment (x. 32) may have a 
certain affinity with the viewpoint of 
these cults, and the supposition that 
the choice of the expression was in- 



152 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 

fluenced from that quarter invites 
tolerance; but, on the other hand, no 
one can be assured that the writer 
was so destitute of capacity for analog- 
ical thinking that he did not of his 
own motion elect the expression. The 
characterization of Christ as "medi- 
ator" and "shepherd" may correspond 
to the employment of titles in one or 
another of the Mysteries. It is to 
be concluded, however, that too abun- 
dant sources of suggestion for these 
titles were furnished to the writer 
in his Pauline, Alexandrian, and Old 
Testament antecedents, to make the 
supposition of borrowing from a pagan 
source at all imperative. As for the 
special phrase, "great shepherd," it is 
parallel to the expression "great high 
priest," which is twice used in the 
epistle, and suits the earnest endeavor 
of the author to picture the pre- 
eminence of Christ. Some other points 
have been alleged to give evidence of 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 153 

borrowing from the Mysteries; but it 
is not worth while to mention them. 
They concern matters that were mere 
commonplaces in the current Chris- 
tianity. 



154 THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS 



CONCLUSION 

It would not be venturesome to 
predict that the radical assumption as 
to the influence of the Mystery Re- 
ligions on the form and content of 
primitive Christianity must recede from 
the field. Like the Pan-Babylonian 
theory of some years ago it represents 
an extreme. Taken in the concrete 
— the only way in which they could 
be taken prior to scholarly induction 
— the Mystery Religions, as they ex- 
isted in the first century, were in no 
wise adapted to appeal to Christian 
leaders. Their opportunity to react 
upon Christian thought and feeling, 
especially in the direction of cere- 
monial magic, came later, when great 
masses which had been leavened by 
them poured into the church. Even 
then the entire adverse result was not 



AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 155 

due to them. Much of it is to be 
attributed to the natural tendency of 
any system, which seeks control over 
men, to gravitate into mechanism and 
pretense when not safeguarded by 
most potent and wholesome influences. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



